title stringlengths 0 299 | text list |
|---|---|
What exactly is a game engine? | [
"So, at five years old you discover that you're really good at drawing and you have an idea for a new cartoon. Unfortunately, being five, you aren't very good at animation. You want your characters to run, jump, throw a ball, but it never comes out right. What are you to do? Do you want to spend years practicing this?\n\nAs luck would have it, your friend is really good at figuring out how to make actions look right. He can draw the path the ball is supposed to take through the air and the skeleton outline of our characters as they jump and run. So you have him draw all of the motions out for you and you draw your characters on top of that. \n\nGame engine are similar. They provide the \"real world\" aspects for your game so that you can focus on the art and story that make your game unique. Sure you can make an amazing 3D model of your character but can you make it walk/run/jump and interact with the world realistically? The game engine handles those types of things. There are different types of engines too, like graphics or physics engines. \n\nHope this helps. I can be more specific if you want.",
"A game engine is a program that provides many of the basic features of a game, such as graphics, realistic physics, sound, etc. Using a game engine saves game developers time, because they don't have to rewrite that code every time they make a game. Instead, they can focus on writing code that is unique to the game.",
"its the code behind the scenes that tells the game how to work.\n\nExamples\n\n1. What are the physics of the game?\n2. How do you actually draw all the graphics on the screen?\n3. When you shoot a weapon what happens?",
"It's kind of an all-encompassing term that essentially means \"game software without anything specific to a game\". If you took Mario and removed all the graphics, removed all the levels, and removed all the sounds, you'd still have _something_. You'd still have software that allows you to draw to a screen, simulate some kind of physics, play audio, handle input devices, etc.\n\nYou can have engines like Unity which is very general, or you could have an engine like the Crusader Kings 2 engine, which is more specialized.",
"You know when you want to draw a circle, you use a stencil to help make it perfectly round? A game engine is kind of like a stencil for making games -- it gives the game maker some tools and structure to help make the game."
] |
Why cant you see stars in pictures taken from the moon, but you can see stars in pictures taken from earth. | [
"Because the Moon is too bright. If you just try to take a normal picture of the sky from Earth, you probably wouldn't see any stars either. The picture from Earth where you see stars are usually long exposure photos, captured in a very dark location. If you try to take a similar picture from the Moon, you'll also see stars.",
"It mostly boils down to the fact that NASA wasn't interested in photographing the stars, but rather the moon itself. The lunar surface is very reflective, and landings were performed in the lunar morning. The result was very bright conditions. The stars were simply too dim by comparison to be captured on the film."
] |
If it is true that male humans have better sense of smell, how is this possible? | [
"Do you have a source? Every resource I have ever read says the opposite - that women have a much better sense of smell than men. It is even suggested that during ovulation that women's sense of smell increases significantly.\n\n_URL_0_"
] |
How can a corporation like Activision-Blizzard think King Digital (maker of Candy Crush) is worth 5.9 BILLION dollars? | [
"King Digital has about 315 million (common) shares outstanding, and earned a little north of $1.75 per share these past 12 months that puts a very rough estimate of their annual earnings at $550 million.\n\nWhen one company buys another, the price can usually be ballparked as some multiple of the company's proven earnings. This multiple reflects the fact that they're not just buying the company's assets as things stand now, but also its value as a going concern (its earnings going forward, which will presumably continue to grow). A multiplier of 10-11 isn't terribly uncommon for businesses in this sector.\n\nPlus, setting aside the on-paper value, a blue-chip veteran of the gaming industry like Blizzard/Activision no doubt sees additional opportunities for synergy buying up a huge chunk of the mobile gaming market for itself.",
"King has an operating income of $600 million. Not that strange why someone would pay $6 billion for a company that is profiting $600 million a year. Mojang (Minecraft) had an operating income of $100 million.",
"Its a gateway to a large number of consumers, in an area that Activision-Blizzard doesn't have a particularly strong presence. They're not just paying for Candy Crush but also everything that King Digital has learned about its customer base - which could help them develop a more meaningful presence in the mobile games space, which is big, fast growing and has a very different demographic than what Activision-Blizzard has experience with.\n\nBasically, Activision-Blizzard decided that spending about $6Billion was faster and/or more cost effective than spending the time to develop the resources and gather the information themselves.",
"Why not?\n\nEnterprise Value (which is the minimum the acquirer has to pay)= Market Cap + Debt - Cash. \n\nKing Digital is a listed company. The market cap is $5.6Bn. They have zero debt. They had $960mn in cash and cash equivalents in year ending 2014. Plugging these numbers in the above formula: 5.6 + 0 - .96 = $4.64Bn. \n\nGiven that King Digital had $2.3bn in sales in 2014, and a profit margin of 25%, and a 60% RoE I think it is a steal.",
"This is very simple!\n\nActivisionBlizzard\n\nHow they made money: console and PC games\n\nHow they will/want/need to make money: mobile games\n\nThis deal gets them a third distribution leg/outlet. Also I am just assuming the margins on mobile are ludicrous.",
"Candy Crush generated $600,000,000 of revenue last year. That's six hundred million dollars. And that's a game that has already peaked. A significant difference between King and Mojang is microtransactions, which generates a consistent,and massive, revenue stream. \n \nIt does not matter if you think Candy Crush is a stupid game, or is not true game because it is a mobile app. The revenue is there and the market is only growing.",
"King Digital has a revenue stream that generated 2.2 Billion Dollars in revenue last year. That's generated 80% from the mobile gaming market. They have a 450MM/Month User base for their games. They have a huge mobile platform already in place and do it well and gives Activision access to something that they don't have well. It's a synergy play that helps boost Activision's Bottom Line. \n\nThe valuation comes from how much money and revenue King Digital makes as well as the forecasted cost savings, potential benefits and synergies, forecasted revenue streams, and the strength of the mobile games platform developed by King Digital.",
"As others have pointed out, valuations of companies like these are usually an estimation of the profit they will earn over the next 10 years or so. I always feel the same way when I hear about valuations like this though, because Candy Crush will not be generating $600M a year in a couple years, and there is no guarantee that King will come up with the next wildly popular mobile game. However, the people entrusted with making $6B deals are smarter than me so it's probably worth it :)",
"They think it's worth spending 5.9 Billion because they expect to make more than 5.9 Billion in the long run. \n\nWhen they buy King Digital they're getting all expected future money from King's existing games, plus they get the team that *makes* games which can create such profits. Activision-Blizzard don't have a ton of experience in that area, but do have some very strong IP that they probably want to expand into a mobile market.\n\nMobile gaming is a market which has a hell of a lot of potential, and suffers from a bad shovelware ratio. Blizzard in particular is known for their games which maximize the potential of a genre - they weren't the first MMO, or RTS, or MOBA game out there, but they arguably have the best products in two of those three fields.",
"Activision is buying the customer base. 450/500 million users a month breaks down to about $12/customer acquisition. That is dirt cheap.",
"In an interview with the CEO of Activision he openly admits to the company attempting and failing to create mobile platform games. As he claims it is harder than it seems and just isn't in their \"wheelhouse\". They don't see 6 billion in liquid assets and shares, what they do see is 23 billion spent on mobile gaming platforms last year and a need to enter the market. The purchased of King was an investment in the future and a return on games that haven't been created yet.\n\nEdit: I can only assume Activision came in with a lower number and 6bn was eventually agreed upon. King is also well aware of their worth in the mobile gaming market and Activisions position as an outsider.",
"I don't price stock and truth is most don't look at that. Price of stock is worth what you'll pay for it and you can try hard to like it to fundamentals but none times out of ten the share price will behave erratically. But in my experience if a company that makes games you play on the toilet could be valued that much you're looking at a bubble. It's probably the biggest indicator to short sell. Plus all it's eggs are in one pacticular basket.\n\nJust think of the 90s tech bubble. Or glencores/xstrata merger (from 540p a share now worth just over 100p slipping briefly to 80p and going bust because of covenants on loans to do with its share price). \nBest advice on any stock is to go for a plain boring stock that consistently performs hardly anyone will find the new apple and it's definitely not that stock",
"Basically when a company in that field buys another, they're not just buying the games they make but what they will make and all the marketplace experience they have. King knows the casual gaming and mobile markets that Activision doesn't. Blizzard is seeing enough success on the mobile front with Hearthstone to start treating mobilr as more than an idle experiment. Often its more cost effective to buy a competitor than to fight them: you buy them and gain their expertise and remove a chunk of competition in one smooth move. To compare it the reason Microsoft didn't value Minecraft that high is because while that one specific game was nice, that's all Mojang has to offer. They're not marketing pros or experts in a field Microsoft was looking to branch out into.",
"CandyCrash is a cash cow that just keeps minting money for King.\n\nThe Price/earning ratio of Kings was actually surprisingly low for a tech/video game company, at around 7, even at the acquisition price premium it is only around 8.5. \n\nNow the more interesting question is, why was the stock market valuing King so low? Likely because people figured CandyCrash was a one hit wonder and there is little momentum for further rapid growth. Also they were cautious about social games after getting burned by Zynga which attained very high valuation after their IPO only to crash down.",
"Maybe they are just doing the rest of us a solid. Buy them up, fix the predatory programming, end the attempts to copyright common words like \"Saga\", and stop copying other games then suing them.\n\nI can hope.\n\nSomeone put together a \"Good Guy Blizzard\" or something.",
"As a share holder of both companies, I couldn't care less what their idea was. I'm a happy man.",
"While we're at it, can somebody explain where this $5.9 bil will go to? Like, shareholders?"
] |
When a person with photographic memory reads a book, is it like they have a video recorder in their head and records the whole thing then later goes through the memory to actually read the book, or as soon as they look at a page, they automatically read all the words on it? | [
"To date, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that photographic memories are real. That is not to say people with photographic memories don't exist - just nobody with a photographic memory has come forward and allowed themselves to be tested to validate such a claim. \n\nThe closest thing to a photographic memory that was empirically tested and proven is an eidetic memory. Eidetic memories only appear in about 2-10% of children, and rarely/never in adults. Psychologists tested individuals with eidetic memories who were given 30 seconds to look at a photo. After the photo is taken away from them, eidetikers can \"lock\" the photo in their vision, claim they still see it as clear as day, and can accurately point out details in the photo with unusual accuracy. However, eidetic memories are not perfect and some details can be fudged. \n\nThis may sound photographic to some extent, but there are inherent differences. A photographic memory implies the image/content can be stored. Eidetikers lose the \"locked\" image in their eyes as soon as they blink. \n\nWhile true photographic memories remain an unproven myth today, there have been recorded instances of people with extraordinary memories, if not truly photographic. Stephen Wiltshire, for example, is a savant who managed to draw the entire skyline of a city after a helicopter ride. Arturo Toscanini was a conductor who memorized over 200 symphonies and 100 operas. Emil Krebs was a polygot who mastered 68 spoken languages and studied 120 more. While none of them have truly photographic memories, their memories are pretty outstanding nonetheless!"
] |
Why are the states of matter quantized? i.e. there are 4 distinct states of matter that are not arbitrarily defined. | [
"The difference between water boiling and hot water is where the energy goes. states of matter are defined by what kind of bonds break. \n\nHeat up water. Start a fire to add a quantity of heat to the water. Sometimes,that energy will raise the temperature of the water and sometimes it will go to turn the water into a gas. \n\nWhen water is cool (say, 70 C), the added energy of the fire gets the molecules in the water vibrating. It raises the temperature. When water is hot (about 100 C - boiling) that added energy does not raise the temperature of the water. Instead it creates steam at 100C. A calorie of heat no longer raises the water temperature. Instead the work goes into breaking the intermolecular (hydrogen) bonds. \n\n\nThere are 3 basic states because different forms of bonds can be broken. \n\nIn ice, there are crystalline hydrogen bonds. Each hydrogen bonds to 4 different H2O molecules. \n\nAdd too much heat and instead of the temperature going up, the energy goes into moving the molecules around so much that they can't be a crystal. The hydrogen molecules now forms weak bonds with 3.4 molecules of H2O instead. Some materials skip this partially bonded state. Dry ice sublimates directly to a gas. \n\nHeat up liquid water to much and the hydrogen bonds give way alltogether and only the covalent bonds between the H and the O are left. That's steam. \n\nHeat steam too much and the molecule itself breaks down to the atoms. The covalent bonds break and the ions are left exposed as a plasma. \n\nYou can go hotter and break down subatomic bonds as in a super collider. You can go cooler and form superstates as in a Bose Einstein condensate."
] |
If gay marriage is made legal (which is a good thing) what arguments would one use to keep polygamy illegal? | [
"It makes an absolute mess of family law.\n\nRight now, a marriage is between two people & a child has, at most, two parents. What happens to the children in a 3-marriage if A divorces B & C because B is abusive? Obviously, we would want to minimize B's custody rights but that would unfairly penalize C. What about a 4-marriage where A & B separate from C & D and A & B are the biological parents of children?\n\nDivorces can also be tricky - what about a 3-marriage where A & C want nothing to do with each other but still want to stay with B?\n\nAllowing gay marriage doesn't require any major changes to the legal framework of marriage - we simply change the definition to allow any two people rather than a man & a woman. Allowing poly-marriage would require a *major* reworking of the laws to accommodate arbitrary family size & structure to satisfy the needs of an *incredibly tiny* minority of people.",
"Not that I have any interest in a poly marriage but honestly I don't know that there is a logical argument against it. As long as it's consenting adults then who cares how many adults are consenting?",
"The only real argument I heard against polygamy is the financial burden it could put on companies that employ people in this type of relationship. If employee X has three spouses not working, a company who is obligated to provide health coverage for them would be facing a greater financial burden than with a standard couple. But even that is kind of a sketchy reason. How many poly couples will be working at any given place. \nAlthough, letting a close but very sick friend into a marriage so they can get your company's health plan would probably become a thing.",
"In theory none. Polygami isn't nothing inherently bad or evil. Problem is basically every polygamous society was enforced by men, for the benefit of men. And woman was treated mostly as a belonging etc... \n\nThe point is nobody is really lobbing for polygami in the more \"civilized\" society. So there is really no danger of legalizing it. I suppose the point of why it is not legal is because if we were to legalize it. It would bring more trouble than benefits."
] |
Hall efect | [
"A magnetic field causes the paths of charged particles to curve. If you have an electric current flowing in a conductor, perpendicular to a magnetic field, the paths of the charge carries are deflected to one edge of the conductor. Since there is more charge on one edge than the other, there is now a voltage between the edges."
] |
Why did the Japanese "let the emperor still be emperor" ? | [
"I think it's kind of like how the Queen is still the Queen, but Parliament actually runs the country.",
"A lot of the other replies are telling you about why the Allies did not depose the emperor when they invaded. But I don't think this answers your question. Your question is asking why the Japanese people repeatedly allowed the emperor to remain emperor despite the many revolutions over it's history.\n\nThe answer is that he is a powerful symbol of Japaneseness, prestige and power, and so whatever warlord or political group wanted to gain or maintain power, could use him to advance their agenda. Getting an endorsement from the emperor was kind of like getting an endorsement from the pope in Medieval Europe.",
"Can't watch whatever that is right now, but it's more like the *Americans* let the emperor still be the emperor. If they were going to be permitted to write up Japan's post-war constitution, effectively outlining how the country would function despite having no reason to be accepted by the Japanese people, it was a shrewd move on behalf of the US forces to keep the emperor. They therefore didn't look like Western imperialists overthrowing everything Japan knew.\n\nHowever, unlike European constitutional monarchies, the Japanese royal family really is just ceremonial. They don't even have nominal parliamentary powers, and if the monarch *is* trusted with anything official, it will only be because Parliament delegates it to them. It's popular belief that European monarchs don't actually have any real powers, but that's not true. Using the UK as a contrasting example, the British military swears allegiance to the *Queen*, not Parliament, as a safeguard against Parliament turning the military on its people, and the Queen also has the ability to veto any act of Parliament if she sees fit.",
"Emperor was more of a figure-head until the meiji restoration that dethroned the seat of power from the tokugawa shogun line and reseated that power in emperor meiji. Emperor was always a god figure, as the emperor was descended from Amaterasu. The SCAP (Supreme Commander of Allied Powers) decided that dethroning the emperor was a bad idea as the united states wanted to utilize japan to mobilize and equip a military to fight communism.",
"Since I don't see an answer here, what I remember from my freshmen cultural history was that there was a deep seated respect for the emperor in the people's minds so as a better way to control the people they kept him in his seat but just took the power from him",
"Religion. The Emperor was considered a holy god person. So even if the Emperor doesn't necessarily carry any real political power they can still be treated as a sort of pseudo-deity.",
"As part of the surrender agreement at the end of WW II the Emperor renounced his divinity but was kept in place by the allies (Gen. MacArthur) to placate the Japanese people who still held a great respect form him and the position. This helped the allies in governing Japan after the end of WW II and probably prevented a whole lot more deaths, both Japanese and Allied. \nAs for now he is still a highly respected figure and holds a position similar to the Quene/King of England.",
"The existence of an Emperor is an essential part of what it is to be Japanese; there's a deep cultural attachment that is hard to explain.\nHe is a symbol of *what it is to be Japanese*. \nRemoving the Emperor from Japan would be like removing American flags, or removing tea from the British. The actual effects would be minimal but the cultural emotional disruption would huge."
] |
What does alcohol consumption feels like? | [
"It burns against your throat and down into your belly. Then it kinda fizzles into a warm happy feeling that spreads through your body. The effects on your brain can be completely unnoticed initially, but continued drinking exacerbates them. For me I smile more, talk more, and become more relaxed. If I get drunk I think everything is funny, I involve myself in every conversation, and I slump or lean on things. I've learned to identify this stage and stop drinking. Because if I continue the silly/happy feeling turns into anger and sadness, I shout a lot, and my arms and legs seem to operate on a delay.",
"Just warm and happy like you don't have a care in the world. \n\nYou might feel a bit dizzy and stupid, but your ability to notice you feel dizzy and stupid has diminished so you only notice that if you really try to.",
"Kinda makes you feel dizzy. Depending on your personality type it can bring out the worst in you. When I'm drunk I get in peoples faces and start fights lol."
] |
Why do people shit themselves with fear? | [
"Most animals have a natural aversion to fecal matter. As such, it can be an effective escape/survival strategy to shit yourself and hope that a predator smells/sees it and leaves you alone. It can be hardwired into the \"flight\" part of fight/flight as it's a pretty good deterant/distraction.",
"When your \"fight or flight\" reflex activates, your body redirects as much blood as possible towards your limbs so you can actually fight, or run away.\n\nThat means that the rest of your body will get less blood than usual. That's the sinking feeling you get sometimes. Your digestive system might not like that, and become \"unstable\"... the muscles that keep your different outlets shut (aka sphincters) will not get enough blood to do their work correctly.\n\nAlso, as Rich_Nix0n said. Poop smells bad.",
"It's kind of like octupi and ink. It serves to confuse predators.\n\nsource: me."
] |
Why is it easier to "see" things in your mind, rather than "touch" or "smell"? | [
"Note: I'm not a neuroscientist.\n\nIt is possible that the modern human brain has more dedicated visual processing over the other senses which my allow for \"visual thought\" to be predominant. I've also heard it said that the sense of smell is a better trigger for memories than any of the other senses. \n\nAlso, I may be talking out my ass.",
"I'm curious why you didn't include hearing and feeling into the question. When you hear something, like singing a song in your head, it's called audiation. Try singing \"Happy Birthday\". Now, sing it in your head without making any audible noise. That is called audiation.\n\nYou're asking about visualizing as well as the equivilant for smell and tase (and I'm curious for touch). I would venture a guess, as per Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, that whatever your strongest areas of intelligence are transfer most easily into the mental state equivilant (audiation, visualization). \n\nI can mentally smell fresh baked cookies, and mentally feel how my girlfriend rubs my hand. I think this also offers a solution as to why some people can easily perform math equations in their head (mathematics is one of the identified intelligences).\n\nSee:\n_URL_0_"
] |
What is the advantage of spending more money to buy an unlocked phone? | [
"The only advantages are that you can choose any provider and you can get a prepaid plan. If you text/ring a lot, it's better to not get an unlocked phone and just get a contract.",
"You aren't necessarily spending more money. You are spending for the cost of the phone *up front* rather than over 12/18/24 months as you would on a contract. If you go for a contract, you will spend $700 plus the cost of your contract (calls, texts, data) in monthly instalments. \n\nThe advantage of a contract of course is a smaller amount of money to pay per month. The disadvantage of a contract is that you are locked in for X months with that carrier. Maybe that isn't so bad, but some people might not like it. \n\nI will give you my UK example. Buying an unlocked S3 would cost me 500 GBP. I can then take my phone and choose my own plan with a carrier that I like. I can choose a 10GBP/month SIM-only plan or any other plan that suits my data-centric needs. Over 24 months, this will cost me \n\n 500 + (24*10) = 740 GBP.\n\nYou can see that I spent a lot of money at first, but I spend a small amount of money per month.\n\nOr, I can go for a long-term contract. I can go for a [contract](_URL_0_) that is 24 months for 31GBP/month. Plus 89 GBP for the handset. That means \n\n 89 + (24*31) = 833 GBP. \n\nSo for my specific needs, it is cheaper to get a SIM free phone. Maybe your specific needs are different. My needs are around data, not phone/text and this works out cheaper for me. \n\nThe advantage of an unlocked phone is that if I get annoyed with Vodafone, I can switch to another carrier for the same monthly rolling contract. It also means that if I go to another country, I can buy a cheap SIM there and start using my phone. Another advantage is that I will get Android updates faster than if it is locked or through a carrier.\n\nA disadvantage of unlocked phones is that if you have trouble with it, your carrier will not care, it is up to you to solve it or return it for repairs.",
"One advantage is, if you travel internationally frequently, one does not have to pay the extortionate roaming charges of one's home cell-phone company. \n\nFor example: if I used my home cell-phone company's \"International Package\" for data on my recent trip to where I am now, it would cost me $100 for 30Mb ($3.3/Mb). Instead -- since I have an unlocked phone -- I paid $12 for 3Gb ($0.004/Mb): a difference of a factor of ~1000 in dollars per byte."
] |
How is it that you can have some or all of a brain hemisphere removed and maintain motor function on that side, yet a stroke can cause lifelong paralysis? | [
"The short answer is that the brain is fucking weird.\n\nThe long answer is that the muscles are controlled in clumps spread through the brain.\n\nBut those clumps are mostly together.\n\nThat's why a stroke will often hit only certain muscles, if it's a small one, the blood to certain bits of the brain was cut off long enough to cause brain damage.\n\nIn a larger stroke it will hit large parts of the brain, and so might get all or most of your muscle functions.\n\nAnd then the part about the Brian being weird, the brain can often shift stuff around to compensate for damaged or missing bits depending on what's missing and how.\n\nSo you can have one hemisphere missing, and the brain will be able to compensate (sorta).\n\nBut, that takes time, people have learned to do stuff like talk, post stroke. But they had to give their brain time to rewire. So in the short term, they loose mototr functions.\n\nSee: _URL_0_",
"Think of a city, a big one. Now, the buildings in that city have different goals and purposes. There could be a school, a skyscraper, or a warehouse. The point is, they're all different. And there are plenty of these buildings. You wouldn't have 1 skyscraper, 1 school and 1 warehouse, but you would have say 20 skyscrapers, 25 schools and 120 warehouses. And they all need electricity to power them up.\n\nLet's just say that a power plant malfunctioned, and thus the amount of electricity powering the city became reduced. If it was a minor malfunction, the damage could be minimal with maybe 1 or 2 schools having a blackout. Not catastrophic, but it's gonna take a bit of time to restore that power. If it was major malfunction however, whole parts of the city could lose electricity and the damage would be massive. You would have schools, warehouses, skyscrapers, offices, anything that depends on electricity, being ruined and you would see productivity going down the drain. It would take massive amounts of time to get power back and regain the lost productivity, if you could do it at all. Even then you could only regain so much.\n\nIf instead say, a warehouse exploded due to some accident, well the rest of the warehouses could increase their storage to compensate for the loss while they repair the damaged warehouse.\n\nNow think of the buildings as different parts of the brain, the electricity as blood, the power plants as the blood vessels, the lost productivity being the diminished function of the muscles, and power plants malfunctioning as being bursting blood vessels. If the burst is minor, then the damage would be minimal and it would take some time to repair the dead cells. But if the burst is major, then the damage would be severe, and you would see massive cell death, either from too much/too little blood. Sure you could do some rehabilitation to regain some of the original functionality it once had, but it would take a long time, and you wouldn't be able to regain much of the original functionality.\n\nIf instead of the blood vessels rupturing you get a part of your brain removed, then the brain can in the meanwhile increase or re-delegate the function of the part you just lost to other parts of the brain. But in the end it's the same, the brain will try to fix things and reroute things in the meantime (although the rerouting part ends up being forever). It just takes time to do so.",
"Normally after a surgery like that the person would be almost completely paralyzed on the opposite side of the body of the removed hemisphere, but if they are young the other side of their brain will eventually takeover responsibility for the missing side (with extensive therapy). This can happen in older people too but it appears to be much more difficult as brain plasticity decreases with age."
] |
What's the dark spot you see when you poke your eye in certain ways? It's almost like a movie cue mark. | [
"I think that's from messing with eye pressure. You probably shouldn't do that."
] |
Why do teeth occasionally hurt when you eat something sweet? | [
"I get the same thing. Dentist didn't really have an explanation, but said it wasn't cavities.",
"I am in the dental field and this is common. I would say go for a routine check up that includes cavity detecting X-rays. This is to rule out if you do have cavities or not. Most insurance companies cover your cleanings, exam and x-rays. The other thing I would recommend, is switching to a sensitivity toothpaste and use it religiously for 4-6 weeks to notice a difference. It doesn't matter what brand, just one made for sensitivity. Without going too much into anatomy of your teeth, they essentially have pores that are really called \"dentinal tubules.\" These tubules are the source for most sensitivity problems. And of course lastly, floss. Just do it. That's a conversation for another day.",
"they should not hurt, you either have cavity or your teeth emale is very fucked up, either way you should talk with your dentist",
"I'm a dentist so I can answer this as best possible. Basically you have nerves in your teeth. Sometimes when you have decay or a large filling the sugar and additives in sweeties get down to the nerve and cause a short sharp pain. This can be avoided with your usual check ups and radiographs however some people just have sensitive teeth, in which case I have a top tip; rub toothpaste onto your teeth half an hour before you brush and keep it on until you brush. Helps a lot.",
"I get this too! I always racked it up to the amount of sugar, after drinking water and running my tongue over the tooth for a little bit it's always fine. My teeth are fine. Whyyy.",
"This happens to me, but with sour and salty things. Cold things too, but that's more normal"
] |
Waking up suddenly at 4:30AM feeling full of energy vs falling back asleep for another 30mins and waking up feeling like you could use another 6Hrs. | [
"One possible reason is that we have sleep cycles (~90 mins) that dictate how we feel when we wake up.\n\nIf you wake up at the end of one, you feel good.\n\nToo early or too late while you’re in deep sleep, and you feel horrible.\n\nGoing back to sleep after waking can slip you back into your cycle, and you end up in the middle of a new one after 30 minutes.",
"When you sleep you need them to be in 2 hour measurements.\nUsually with a minimum of 6 hours. \nThat extra 30 minutes seems like a great idea but you cannot fall asleep fully in 30 minutes."
] |
What are the cons of electric cars? | [
"1. Cost. A Chevy Volt, for example, costs 41,000 US dollars. A Ford Focus EV costs about the same. That's sginificantly more than a similar-sized gas car.\n\n2. Range. You can't drive as far on a fully-charged battery as you can on a full tank of gas. On a Chevy Volt, you're only going 40 miles on a fully-charged battery. On a Ford Focus EV, you get 100 miles per charge. However, for someone like me who commutes 30 miles to and from work, the battery range just isn't enough.\n\n3. Charge time. It takes a long time to charge the batteries. 4 hours on a Chevy Volt. It's much quicker to fill up at a gas station than it is to charge your vehicle. When your batteries are on empty, you're stuck at home for awhile while you wait for the car to charge.\n\n4. Charging stations. There aren't many public places with charging stations. In the USA, there are less than 100 public charging stations for cars. It's going to cost a lot of money for businesses to install charging stations, so don't expect them any time soon.\n\n5. Repair costs. I don't have actual numbers to back this one up, but I would suspect they cost a lot more to repair than the average gas-powered car because it's a whole different type of car. Technicians need to be specially trained. And your average mom-and-pop car shop won't know how to fix it.\n\n6. Large sizes not availabe. Personally, I'd love an electric car. But I need a pickup truck strong enough to pull a large boat. They don't make electric pickups with the size or power that I need. Also, Americans are used to large vehicles. Getting us to buy small cars is a tough sell.\n\n7. Cold climates. Batteries don't hold a charge as well in cold temperatures. For someone like me, who lives in an area with a long and cold winter, I'm not sure I'd trust the battery to perform as advertised.\n\n8. Insurance. Electric cars tend to be small. And small cars often (but not always) have higher insurance rates because they often (but not always) don't perform as well on safety tests.\n\n9. Too quiet. Seriously - there is concern that pedestrians and bicyclists can't hear them coming and therefore may be more dangerous when used in heavily populated areas. I'm not sure I'm buying into this argument, but it's a concern that's been out there for awhile.",
"The electricity has to come from somewhere. The grid is built to handle a certain amount of people using electronics. Charging electric cars uses a massive amount of power. If enough people start using electric cars (~3-5%) the power grid will be overloaded and fail.\n\nFurthermore, batteries are hugely inefficient. Producing and disposing of a battery is enormously unfriendly to the environment. We aren't that good at making batteries either. You cant travel significant distances on a battery... a normal commuter using an electric car would go through a battery every year or two. There are dozens more problems, but suffice to say on a large scale the downsides significantly outweigh the benefits.",
"There are two main problems with electric cars.\n\nFirst, battery technology. The limitations of batteries drive up the prices on cars that will never be able to drive as fast or as far as a gasoline-powered vehicle. Until better batteries can be developed (if they can), this will always be the most limiting factor.\n\nSecond, electricity generation. Even if the perfect battery existed, the vast majority of kilowatt hours are generated using fossil fuels. Renewable sources will probably never be able to account for the demand we'd need to power what we use electricity for right now; imagine adding all of the world's gasoline-based technology to that demand. Nuclear energy is promising, but the high-profile accidents that have occurred have created a popular aversion to even considering nuclear power (even though there are safer alternatives to uranium; for instance, thorium-based fission reactors have the potential to offer a realistic fossil-fuel alternative that is relatively safe).",
"You've still got to produce that electricity...which comes mainly from coal in the US, and coal is not that environmentally friendly.\n\nI'm a big fan of cars powered by hydrogen (see: Honda Clarity) It has its downsides (no real refueling infrastructure outside CA)",
"I have been driving a Nissan Leaf for 6 months. In my experience:\n\nThe most serious con listed above is 2) Range. \"100 miles\" range is calculated using a very lenient test cycle. Real world range is actually about 65 miles on the freeway. If you live 15 miles from work, and you want to go home at lunch or run an errand after work, then you are running into the \"low battery\" limit. So you have to plan your day's driving activities carefully. The problem with more range is that it needs a bigger battery, which is more expensive, and takes up more space. Give it a few years for batteries to improve further and reduce cost, and it will be better, but this will always be somewhat of a limitation for EVs. \n\nAs for 4) Charging stations, \"Less than 100 public charging stations\" is completely false. There are actually several thousand, and a simple Google search will find them. \n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_3_\nBut it's kind of a moot point - I had a charger installed in my garage, and I recharge while I sleep. So far I have never used a public charger. \n\nAs for 6) \"Large sizes not available\" Check out _URL_2_\nThe argument that electric vehicles cannot be large size is not true. They are freaking expensive, though, due to the massive battery and electric motor required."
] |
How difficult would it be to intentionally build an immunity to a lethal poison, a la The Princess Bride? | [
"There isn't a blanket answer to this. Some poisons you simply cannot develop an immunity to, and they will end you no matter how hard you try. If you were curious, the practice itself is named Mithridatism."
] |
How do non-partisan entities maintain nonpartisanship? Don't presidents, chairs, board members, justices have internal biases? | [
"Level headed people are able to see when they have a bias about something and view the opposing side and their own without their bias and determine a course of action based on that. It is similar to a woman saying she would not have an abortion but at the same time not wanting to make that choice for another woman by voting to outlaw abortion as a whole.",
"By compromise. Something completely lost in American society, buy yeah. You can have ideological beliefs and still not stop all progress because it doesn't adhere exactly to your view."
] |
what is the significance of Einstein's elevator thought experiences? | [
"Imagine you are in a closed room, no doors or windows, and no communication outside. (this is the elevator). Now imagine you are in this room, floating in space, in zero gravity. You can throw a ball, float around, etc. There is no gravity and no movement, so liquids float in the air, you are weightless.\n\nNow imagine you are in that same room, but the room itself is being accelerated upward at 9.8 m/s^2. Your feet are planted solidly on the floor due to your acceleration. If you drop a ball it will fall to the ground and bounce back up. You can do tests in the room and determine that you are indeed accelerating at 9.8m/s^2. If you are familiar with physics I’m sure you know that 9.8m/s^2 is the strength of earth gravitational pull, I.e. the speed which things will accelerate downward at if you drop them. So if you took this same lab, but instead of accelerating it at 9.8m/s^2 upward, you just stuck it on earths surface, **you would not be able to tell the difference from inside the lab**. The same is true if you accelerated downward at 9.8m/s^2 while in the earths gravity: you would feel the same as you would in the first scenario in space: completely weightless. Gravity and acceleration are basically the same thing.\n\nThis led him to believe that any theory which could relate two accelerating frames of references, would have to include gravity. This became what is called the “equivalence principle” which basically says that uniform acceleration has the same effect as a uniform gravitational field. \n\nThis idea led him to be able to answer an age-old question that was around since time of Newton: why are the inertia of an object (which fights acceleration) and the gravitational power (which causes acceleration) always correlated. He answered it simply: the reason a body with large inertia also has large gravitational pull is because they are both directly related to the same property of the object: mass.\n\nWhile it seems pretty simple, this was basically the revelation that allowed him to finish his theory of general relativity.",
"There is a PBS documentary that explains it better than any reddit thread could. \n\n_URL_0_"
] |
Why is writing a paper check totally free for both parties while any kind of electronic transfer has fees? | [
"While I agree with the previous poster, as someone who works in Banking/Finance/Investments I can tell you the real reason is:\n\nChecks bounce. Bounced checks have huge fees which means money for banks (they were $25 to $50 almost 20 years ago!)\n\nElectronic transfers remove the potential for bounced checks I.e. Banks lose the revenue from bounced check fees\n\nTo offset the loss of revenue, they charge an upfront fee for electronic transfers.\n\nThis same thing happened with overdraft fees a few years back. Checking accounts were free but overdrafts incurred huge fees. When banks could no longer charge them without customers opting in, free checking evaporated overnight I.e. They charge a fee for those accounts now to make up for lost revenue from overdraft fees.\n\nIf this were called explain like I'm 50:\n\nThe hardware costs cited above are ultimately capitalized and depreciated by any financial institution as that's an asset to the company. So while yes that is also a motivating factor for the fee, IRS accounting rules offset the initial investment to build all infrastructure and applications required to process the electronic transfers.",
"An electronic transfer requires the corporation many things.\n\n -The data must pass through the servers taking up a lot of internet traffic\n -Database part costs\n -Database maintenance and up keep \n -Paying employees\n -Finally all/most companies main goal is profit!!!! so any new feature will require a cost no company will make an e-transfer will be setup for free"
] |
How does a vending machine recognize a dollar as opposed to a dollar sized piece of paper? | [
"They take a picture. Your piece of paper doesn't look like a dollar bill.\n\nThey read the fine patterns. Your piece of paper that you tried to commit counterfeitting does have the fine patterns that a real dollar bill has, because your printer isn't capable of printing the fine lines. Take a magnifying glass to right side of 5 dollar bill, you'll see \"five dollars\" repeated in the side bar. You'll see \"USA five\" on the purple 5. You'll see names on top of the Lincoln memorial.",
"The ink is magnetic and the bill acceptor has a magnetic head that can read the pattern of ink. The newer machines backlight the bills and scan them as they come in looking at patterns and shadows. There are also ultra violet markers on the bills that can be detected. If you scanned a bill and printed it with magnetic ink you might be able to fool an older machine from the 80s, but nothing newer."
] |
What is happening to someone physiologically when we get our "second wind" of energy? | [
"Our bodied realize they are under undo stress so they release adrenalin. The release of adrenalin makes us feel better and more energetic.",
"Your body has a base level of energy. If you compare it to a battery, your body makes sure that you never go below, say, 60%. Then you get hungry and feel the need to \"recharge\". In stressful situation however, being able to tap into that extra energy can be a life saver. For instance in a survival situation where you can't find food fast. \n\nTo get to this extra energy you need the help of hormones like adrenalin, endorphin or cortisol. Getting that \"second wind\" means you've convinced your body into releasing the necessary hormones."
] |
Why are boobs attractive? | [
"This is more of a shower thought that I had a few months ago, but everyone loves boobs. Gay, straight, male, female, so there has to be some basis in biology. My hypothesis is that everyone loves titties because they're babies primary biological food source and therefore breasts are associated with feeding time, cuddles, and good times. Even as a 24 year old male when I see a nice pair I think, \"wow I'd like to nuzzle up and suck on those\". \n\nTo add to the biological basis, there is significant social pressure to find boobs attractive, again regardless of sexual orientation. Gay guys and girls have much greater access to breasts than I ever will, friends of women with nice boobies will just squeeze then and say \" wow your tits look amazing \" whereas when I do that it's all \"stop you perv\" and \"what are you doing in the women's locker room\"",
"I always thought that the \"distinctly gender\" traits were why things were sexy. Like, it is distinctly male to have larger biceps, larger shoulders, a larger jaw, a beard, etc. So those things are sexy. It's distinctly female to have larger breasts, larger hips, and have socially constructed female traits like longer hair & wearing high heels.\n\nSo, \"sexy\" means distinctly female. At least, that's what I always thought.",
"Monkeys mate 'doggy style' so when a male looks at a female, he looks at her ass. Breasts have shifted to be a 'front butt' to give the same impression. So the human brain is now wired to 'this appearance of two globes is attractive'. \"Tits or ass\" is a fun game where it's a picture, but only shows the cleavage/crack, and it's very difficult to tell the difference sometimes..."
] |
Why is SD memory and flash storage and such always sold with capacities that are double the next lowest capacity? | [
"A popular answer here is sure to be \"because binary,\" but it's more complicated than that.\n\nWith flash memory you are building each individual cell of storage, which likely contains either one or two bits (Flash can store two bits in a single cell by using 4 different values in that cell, since it's fundamentally analog at that level). What this means is that you design some circuit that holds a bit of memory, then you copy/paste it and add a bit more circuitry to let you select between the two cells. Now you have a circuit with twice the memory. Then you repeat the process—copy/paste the design of two cells with selection circuitry and add another layer of selection circuitry and you have 4 cells. You keep on doing this until you wind up with as much memory as you feel comfortable putting on a single piece of silicon—if you put too much then the chip gets too big or you start running into issues with having dead chips.\n\nAt that point you start to put these chips into devices. You take one chip and put it into a device that has another chip that handles the talking back and forth with the computer and you have a product you can sell. A while later you're better at making the devices at that size (you work out the manufacturing kinks and have to throw away fewer devices and can really mass produce them), so the price for the memory chip goes down. So you tweak the controller chip to be able to interface with two chips and you package the whole thing up together. Now you have twice the storage you used to.\n\nEventually you need to compete against other manufacturers who are producing devices at that size so you go back to your memory chip design and you do one more iteration of doubling—you put two of the old chip designs on one chip and you add a bit of control circuitry to interface with both. You can put just one of these chips into your device and sell it, hopefully for less than your competitors who are using two memory chips each. Then you push things further ahead by putting two of these larger chips in the same device, and so on. The cycle repeats.\n\nThis cycle is different from media like hard discs. With that technology you have a blank slate and you try to fit as many bits of information in the area you're given as possible. The platters are standard sizes so your options are either making your bits take up less space on the platter or shoving more platters into your drive. Finding a technology to shrink your bits to take up 30% less space is easier than coming up with a technology to make them take half as much space. There is no copy/pasting that you can do with this kind of technology to double your storage, except for putting in entire extra platters."
] |
How did "ZZzZZzzz" come to represent sleep and how did it become so common? | [
"Someone thought it was a good onomatopoeia for the sound of snoring and it stuck.",
"The onomatapoeia theory is, as far as I'm aware, correct stemming from 1852. It's first published use was from Henry Thoreau who referenced the sound of sleeping locusts when he first wrote \"…the dry-z-ing of the locusts is heard.\"\n\nIt caught on, though, in the first 10 years or so of the 1900s in the advent of comic books who needed a shorthand for snoring. Which comic used it first is not settled upon. \n\nIt was first referenced in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1924, implying it was already part of the lexicon some time before. \n\nEdit: I can't spell"
] |
how does the military keep on getting hacked? | [
"The kind of hacking that is being done is not the ordinary wire fraud hacking. The US military is being hacked by professionals in other countries who have a similar budget, both for cyberdefense and cyberwarfare. \n\nWe hack into their systems as much as they do ours (like all of the projects that Snowden so helpfully ~~compromised~~ exposed), but they don't publicly acknowledge it like the US does."
] |
What is the bends? | [
"When you go underwater to a deep level, the increase in pressure forces nitrogen gas into your blood, just like increased pressure can force CO_2 into pop/soda. When you come up too quickly, the drop in pressure decreases the solubility of the nitrogen, and it comes out of solution and forms gas bubbles in the vascular system (similar to opening a shaken carbonated drink). These bubbles can cause what is called an air embolism, which is when air \"blocks\" a blood vessel and prevents the transmission of oxygen. Since gas goes up due to buoyancy, the bubbles go to your brain, and when your brain gets no oxygen you have big problems. If you come up slowly, the nitrogen leaves through your lungs instead of forming bubbles in your blood vessels, and your live to dive another day."
] |
Why do videos from the 80's-90's always look like someone smudged grease on the camera lens? | [
"Video quality has improved since then. And so has playback quality.\nWith an older video there is less information there. The older video has information for a smaller number of lines of pixels. So when you play it on a new screen, the screen can display many more pixels than it is getting information for. So your computer or tv or whatever has some ability to extrapolate what it needs to fill in spaces, but will mostly use more than 1 of its pixels to show the information that was 1 pixel 20 years ago.",
"Because they are shot on videos from the 80s and 90s. Videos were not designed to last and were of poor resolution and have deteriorated over the years and were not designed to be shown on the high resolution screens of today."
] |
SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, but is anyone searching for "dumb" life? | [
"As /u/ANewMachine615 has said, yes we are looking for \"dumb\" life.\n\nHowever, it's much harder.\n\nLet's say you lived on Planet X and discovered this planet, Earth. You wouldn't be able to simply look and see if there's life. You're too far away. Really, the only way to positively identify life is to observe it (or an historical record of it, like a fossil).\n\nSo how would you go about determining if there is life on a planet without going there?\n\nFirst, you need to determine if life is capable. The number one thing life needs is liquid water. Using scientific instruments (their inner workings beyond the scope of this ELI5), we can know what a planet is made up of. If one of those things is liquid water, then there might be life.\n\nNext, you would need to check for things that would be unusual unless there was life. Radio signals, for instance, would be unusual unless there was life. But as you point out, not all life has that capability. But there are other things that life give off to indicate its presence. In the wild, if you stumble upon wolf feces, you know there's a wolf in the area without having to observe it directly. So you can look for characteristics of life. Maybe things like the presence of methane (but not too much!) could be an indicator of life.\n\nThe problem is, we don't really know what those things are because we only have one known example of a planet with life in the universe.\n\nIt was theorized, including by people such as Carl Sagan, that there might be life on Jupiter. I'm not talking about its moons, but the planet Jupiter itself. I bring this up because it's not terribly unreasonable to think life might exist where it doesn't make much sense. And it's also possible that an exact copy of Earth might exist without any life. So until you go, it's all hypothetical.\n\nAs we learn more about life on Earth, however, the more we're realizing that life is likely common. There has been life on Earth for nearly as long as its been around. And there's life on Earth in places we didn't think was possible (extremophiles). This is starting to lead some people to think that so long as the basic conditions are met, life will exist (Life, uh, finds a way). So maybe after we find more samples and are more certain of the predictions based on those samples, all we really need to do is identify something like liquid water and we'd just assume there's life based on that.\n\ntl;dr - We won't know until we go. Until then, our prediction capabilities are pretty shitty because we only have one example.",
"There are people looking for life on Mars. It's one of the things that the rovers are doing, and the next one [has it as one of the main goals](_URL_0_) (though they don't expect to find current life, just past).\n\nThe problem is that we can't exactly put rovers on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, due to the distances involved, so we can't do that type of search on planets outside our solar system. Even reaching mars is a serious technical challenge, so we've not started looking as seriously at Europa or other possible incubators of life.",
"Anything \"dumb\" is something we have to go physically find and confirm. Intelligent species might possess the same tech we have that is detectable farther away than what can be seen visibly. \n\nImagine you live alone in America and no one else is around and the only piece of technology you have is a radio. You don't know if anyone else is around, especially on the opposite side of the world. If you want to find out if people are living in China, you have two options:\n\nPhysically go there and look around. \n\nor \n\nUse your radio to listen for other radio signals. \n\nSince we can't physically go to other worlds or star systems and look around, we listen on our radio for other signals but this eliminates a lot of other species that don't have radios. Using the example, you wouldn't know if there are trees or not in China using the radio option, just that no one has a radio.\n\nGuessing where life might be is another matter entirely. Since we only have one example of life, Earth, we can only be sure that life grows under Earth like conditions or conditions we are pretty certain life existed on this planet in the past. Scientifically speaking, this is a very limited sample. \n\nTherefore, we try to look at conditions in which there should be an Earth like planet. Current astronomers do this by looking at the deviation of the star. Planets tug on stars with gravity just as the star tugs on the planets and the objects around it. This causes the star to deviate. Obviously bigger planets like Jupiter have more pull and I think we have already found hundreds of systems with gas giants. \n\nHowever, recently scientists have discovered earth size planets in the habitable zone around stars. They estimate around 20% of stars like our sun have planets around the size of Earth in the habitable zone (not to close and hot or too far and cold). Of course habitable means habitable for our idea of Earth like life given our small sample size. \n\nScientists are also considering life outside the usual. The main driver is wherever there might be water such as under the icy surface of Europa. \n\nIn summary, we are mostly guessing for where life might be or might have been. Until we physically go there, man or probe, and search for it, we can't actually be sure.",
"Researchers have devised theoretical methods for detecting 'dumb' life, but ones that work on spectroscopy, for example (i.e. detecting atmospheric O2 as a proxy for photosynthesis), require the ability to directly image extraterrestrial planets, an ability we do not yet have.",
"Another method to look for potential life is presence of Methane. While methane can exist without life, it's such a common compound that most organic life generates that finding extraterrestrial methane makes for a good candidate site to look for life. (Mars was just because it was closeby)",
"When they say a place has a possibility of life mostly what they mean is bacteria or algea, basic \"Dumb\" forms of life. That's why Jupiter's moon Europa is so interesting. What do you think Curiosity is doing up there?"
] |
what even is Ebola and what are it's effects? | [
"Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.\nEVD outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90%.\nEVD outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.\nThe virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.\nFruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are considered to be the natural host of the Ebola virus.\nSeverely ill patients require intensive supportive care. No licensed specific treatment or vaccine is available for use in people or animals.\n\n**Signs and Symptoms**\n\nEVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.\n\n[Source and More Information: World Health Organization](_URL_0_)"
] |
Why has there been a vinyl resurgence in the music industry? | [
"You can get them cheap. They have a slightly different sound quality, and many people enjoy that difference. Album art is pretty great in and of itself. You can roll a joint on an album cover, but you can't on digital music. People like actually having physical items. They have a cool factor that dates back more than a century (the term groovy specifically refers to the grooves in an album, for example). If you are into certain scenes, 7\" singles are a great way to pick up and try out new music in a more interactive way than simply going through youtube. Many people enjoy the nostalgia factor. You can give them away as physical objects to people who also enjoy albums, and that beats the hell out of just sending them a link. You can leave them to your kids. You can get them from your parents. People like them.",
"I'm risking sounding super hipstery here... There are 2 huge reasons I got into vinyl. For one, a vinyl record jacket doubles as fantastic wall art. These artists usually put a lot of time into their album covers, and a basic MP3 thumbnail or even a cd cover just doesn't do it justice. I use them to decorate a wall of my theatre room behind my projector screen. Secondly, and more importantly for me, a vinyl record forces you to both buy and listen to an entire album, not just cherry pick the songs you like. As a music lover there's something comforting about that; so much so I have a separate room in my home for listening to music (linked below). Also, as mentioned above the price is the same now as buying a digital copy, and vinyl records come with a digital download key in most cases. It's nice to have something tangible. \n\n_URL_0_",
"They're just neat. Why do people like anything?",
"The first thing to know about vinyl records is that they never totally disappeared like 8-tracks, cassettes, and reel-to-reel, and there is a robust market supporting the technology required to play them. So as a medium it is and has been better positioned for surges in popularity. \"Hipsters\" can sort-of be credited with the current rise, but really just a rise in the entry-level aspect of vinyl enthusiasm. Sure, the cool kids can swing into Urban Outfitters and pick up a Crosley portable and a Lana Del Rey LP, but consider for a moment that [the Clearaudio Goldfinger cartridge](_URL_1_) exists. Yes, that's a $15,000 record needle available on a commercial site alongside $35 options. The Hot Topic resurgence crowd isn't driving an economy that allows for the manufacture of things like the Goldfinger. My belief is that the resurgence you see may be at the storefront, but it has more depth than a typical hipster fad because of the culture behind it that has never gone away. \n\nTo answer your second question, \"why should (you) care?\" You shouldn't, necessarily. You will certainly read a lot of arguments about whether the typical human ear can hear a difference between digital and analog compression, MP3's vs FLAC vs vinyl, and so forth. There will be a lot of arcane jargon with precious little explanation. At a basic level, for you the music lover, I would explain a vinyl playback system as being one that is more customizable. It's analogous to gear heads that are always souping-up their cars, or computer guys who like to build their own system. You can take a record, play it on System A, and hear the song. Take the same record, play it on System B, and hear the song *plus extra sounds.* Typically what you read/experience are people saying things like, \"I upgraded my cartridge from stock to a $500 Ortofon Bronze and heard a string section I'd never heard before on that Rolling Stones song.\" Hearing new *music* may be a matter of psychology or attention to detail, but there are definitely different *types of sounds* that can be perceived with different equipment. The needles, tone-arms, decks, amps, and speakers all have infinite options that can be tweaked to eek out different qualities to the music. So it's not a matter of *how does it compare to MP3,* necessarily, but rather 'how much do you enjoy interacting with your hobby?'",
"I don't think it is hipster culture really but there is a certain hard to explain factor about having a physical medium. A record (or say a DVD) takes up physical space in our collections. And it cost money. When we run out of space or money we have to get rid of it. It is a physical connection to the music as a medium. We only ultimately keep the music/movies we like in those instances.\n\nWhere as I don't have that connection to my spotify account or the four terrabytes of movies in my Home Cloud. That is so many movies you are just overwhelmed with the choices. So you end up not watching anything.",
"It's making a small resurgence, nothing big. In terms of being a music lover, the only \"benefit\" vinyl has is the sound of vinyl playing due to imperfections, the actual \"quality\" is less than a CD."
] |
Quaternions and Octonions | [
"If you are familiar with ~~imaginary~~ complex numbers that would be a great start. Imaginary numbers are used to keep track of an angle. You have the real and imaginary part. \n\n_URL_2_\n\nSo as you can see to get the angle you take the inverse tangent of the imaginary part over the real part. This has many useful applications. For instance in electrical engineering they are used to keep track of phases and used in circuit analysis.\n\nThe quaternion extends this idea. It is an complex number with three parts. This allows you to keep track of three rotations. So now you can imagine how this is used in the real world. You can keep track of three rotations and we live in a 3 dimensional world.\n\nFamiliar with frames of reference? Quaternions can rotate you between these frames of reference and are not subject to [gimbal lock](_URL_0_) as can happen with using Euler angles to track rotations. You can turn a quaternion into a rotation matrix and a rotation matrix into a quaternion.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nOctonions extend this concept into 8 dimensions. At the end of the day complex numbers, quaternions, and octonions all use a real part and imaginary numbers to keep track of angles. 1 angle, 3 angles, and 8 angles respectively. From that simple idea a lot of really complicated math is derived.\n \nEDIT for clarity"
] |
Why do we make that "hurr-durr" voice when mockingly impersonating someone? Why does that voice signify stupidity? | [
"It sounds like someone with a mental disability, like Down's syndrome. They are seen as stupid, so its a natural voice to use to convey stupidness",
"That particular voice, usually accompanied with a contorted face and hand motions like you're ineffectively trying to stab yourself are stereotypical symptoms of mental retardation.\n\nIt is saying \"you are so stupid, you must be retarded\""
] |
How is this man able to hold on to this chopper for that long? | [
"That's very little acceleration on top of 9.8 m/s^2 of Earth gravity. Downwash probably adds a little more effort. Still, it isn't much more physically demanding than holding on to a stationary bar. Mind that it's pretty easy to hang even from a single hand. With two hands it's a piece of cake. You don't have to pull yourself further up just to hang. It isn't so much that you're likely to fall as that the consequences are big if you do fall.",
"The chopper has to use alot of power to move up but that's because it's heavy. The actual acceleration is somewhat small. You probably exert more force dropping into dangling state from a pull up."
] |
Why do car wheels sometimes appear to be spinning very slow, or backwards? | [
"Our eyes can only interpret and update what is going on at a certain speed. Wheels can be turning very fast.\n\nImagine your eyes are capable of 'updating' to your brain what is going on every 1/20th of a second. Now imagine you are looking at a special clock where the big hand is at 12:00 exactly. If the hand rotates from 12:00 back to 12:00 within 1/20th of a second, our eyes won't be able to see that it traveled all the way in a circle because it happened at an internal too small for us to visualize.\n\nIf the hand actually moved from 12:00 all the way through 12:00 and then to 12:00:01 within the span of 1/20th of a second, then all the way around again past 12:00:01 to land on 12:00:02 within the next 1/20th of a second, and so on and so far, we would be able to see this as the hand slowly moving from 12:00:00 to 12:00:20 within the first second, and it would appear to be moving 1 minute ever 3 seconds, even though it's actually rotating the entire length of the clock + a little every 1/20th of a second! It would only appear to be moving forward, but faster than normal, when it's really going much faster than normal.\n\nSimilarly, if every 1/20th of a second it rotated 59 minutes 59 seconds around the clock, it would appear to actually be moving backwards.\n\nIf it rotated exactly 24 hours each interval, it would appear motionless.\n\nIt's basically just an optical illusion caused by how fast our eyes and brains can interpret what is going on."
] |
What is the difference between a republic and a democracy? Which one is the U.S.? | [
"A republic means a small group of people are chosen so that they can make the governing decisions of a country.\n\nA democracy means that the people vote on the governing decisions of the country.\n\nThe United States is a democratic republic. The people vote to choose the small group that will make the governing decisions.",
"These are terms that have had different uses over time, which leads to some confusion. Political scientists tend to use *republic* to mean \"not a monarchy,\" and *democracy* to mean \"a state where sovereignty is constitutionally vested in the people, and leaders are chosen through regular elections with universal suffrage.\" Thus, they have no trouble calling the United States both a republic and a democracy.\n\nThis use differs somewhat from how that of classical antiquity. Many ancient writers criticized democracy as being mob rule, because the passions of the people were not restrained. By contrast the Roman republic was primarily governed by officials drawn from the ranks of the patricians, a social elite class, while the plebeians (the majority) elected tribunes whose primary power was a veto right.\n\nWhen people complain that the U.S. is not a democracy but a republic, they're not using the commonly accepted meaning of those terms. The distinction they usually mean to make is between *representative democracy*, where government is primarily exercised by elected leaders, and *direct democracy*, where the people frequently set policy by referendum. The United States is a representative democracy, most strongly so at the federal level, with the states varying in how much influence the people have directly. (E.g. California is known for its referendums on controversial topics.)\n\nThe Founders tended to use the term \"republic\" to describe the American constitution, because it contrasted so strongly with the monarchies that were the norm at the time. With the French revolution and the great changes in Europe during the 19th century, terminology changed, and they way we speak today (especially in political science) tends to come from the latter half of the 19th century, hence the difference."
] |
What does contemporary military jet fighting look like? | [
"It mostly involves a lot of talking.\n\nThe problem with locking on to enemies 30-40km away is that you can't see them. Therefore you have to be absolutely sure that whatever you're shooting at is really the enemy. This is especially true in modern guerilla/assymetrical/highly mobile war - if you are never sure where the enemy is, and your own forces are all over the place, and you preferably want to avoid killing civilians as well, you will lose a lot of time on confirming targets. This can actually take so long that, especially if the planes you're targeting are closing in, by the time you're allowed to fire most of the range advantage is gone.\n\nAnd if both you and the enemy miss/evade the initial strike, then you're pretty much on top of each other already.\n\nDogfighting can and certainly does happen, even in modern air combat. For example during the Persian Gulf war the term \"furball\" was coined - which describes a dogfight involving multiple friendly and enemy planes.\n\nThere are other advantages to high maneouverability as well, such as better ability to evade missiles. Finally, though here I enter the territory of pure speculation, I assume that maneouverability is actually quite cheap to achieve. For most modern planes it is done almost entirely with thrust vectoring engines which, considering the overall price of the plane, are a relatively minor investment.",
"[Simulation games seem fairly close to the real thing.](_URL_0_)",
"> What does 21st century dog fighting look like? With missiles that can lock onto targets from 30-40 kilometres away. \n\nIt doesn't. Pop quiz: when was the last time an American pilot shot down an enemy plane? [1991.](_URL_1_) The last pilot to shoot down an enemy plane? He's a General now. That's how far away we are from any air force from challenging ours.\n\nThe US hasn't lost a fighter to air-to-air combat since Vietnam.",
"You almost never see dogfights; it's much more akin to standoffs on old battleships. You line up your fighter groups, advance towards the enemy fighters, lock on your missiles before you can even see the enemy, then fire. Then you turn around, avoid the missiles they've sent your way (using things like ECM, flak, or just evading, which is where maneuverability comes in), and hope you shot them down. Maybe a few more missiles get fired, if some survived, but it's a fast paced, very nerve wracking experience for all involved. \n\nOf course, we never hear about things like this happening, and I'm just recounting some of the military theory that I've heard. Usually, you'll just send up to planes to 'escort' the one plane that 'accidentally' flew into your airspace back to where they should be.\n\nAn old aircraft would be shot down before it ever got close enough to see the enemy fighters, which can fly higher, faster, out of sight. If you have current weapons, you would be able to get a shot off since you have the range, and might get a luck kill, but you'd probably be best off bailing out as soon as you shot your missile.",
"> Bonus question I've wondered about - how would an old aircraft perform in today's jet fights? If you have access to current weapons, but are on, say, a mig-21, could you still not do well?\n\n5th gen fighters, like the F-22, are able to dismantle modern 4th gen fighters like the F-15C in a way that's not even funny. Something like a mig-21 wouldn't stand a chance..Because weapons are only part of the picture.\n\nLets have, for the fun.. have theoretical scenario 4xMig-21 vs 4xF-22, bot armed with modern short-range IR missiles, like the Aim-9X. And lets have them head-on 40miles apart. They are alone, without any AWACS/ground radar support. So lets begin. :)\n\nTo be able to attack you have to find your enemy first, this is when radar comes into play. The mig-21 has a very old, very weak radar, that is able to detect targets only (as I remember) up to 10km, and can operate only for a short period of time before overheating...Finding a stealth plane 40miles away is just not possible. On the other hand, the F-22 has the state of the art latest radar technology and can easily detect the migs at 40miles.\n\nNow, for some time jet fighters are equipped with something called Radar warning receiver (or RWR for short). This is a bunch of antennas on the airplane able to detect illumination by radar and then informing the pilot \"be carefull, a radar is looking at you\". The problem is that the radar in F-22 is a low propability intercept radar. That means it is constatly changing it characteristic (power, freqeuency, repetition rate..etc) and for the old system mounted on the mig-21 it is undisguisable from background noise.\n\nThe F-22 knows where the target is, the migs doesn't even know something is there. If the F-22 would have long-range missiles the fight would be over at this point. But as they only have short-range they have to close in...\nModern systems help at this stage too. First, thanks to datalink the F-22 can share target information. So only one plane has to have its radar on, this plane can stay behind while the rest of the flight approaches the enemy...silently.\n\nAnd thanks to displays in the cockpit the pilot have a birds-eye view of the situation, helping their situational awareness. They can exploit the low cockpit visibilty of the mig-21 and approach from it's blind spot...making it difficult for the migs to spot them even visually...They can also approach in such way that even if they did spot them, the F-22 would have virtualy unbeatable positional advatange.\nAll that is left is use the datalink info to point the IR missile at the targets and shoot. \n\nBonus: At one point I said the fight would be over the F-22 would have long-range radar missiles. That's because those missiles are as scary, as the fighter itself. Even though they are radar based, they don't use radar (thus you don't know they are on its way) most of the flight. They fly a preprogrammed path, with target data being fed to them via datalink, and only when they are close to the enemy (where the fighter basicaly has no chance of escape) they turn their radar on to guide to the target itself. Few F-22 are able to beat a bunch of F-15C at long ranges (beyond visual range combat) without the F-15C even knowing what hit them.",
"Modern weapons are systems not aircraft alone. The aircraft is just one group of nodes. AWACS, satellites, drones, tanks and ships are integrated to develop information about threats. Threats are often over the horizon. \n\nAircraft provide attack capabilities for high value targets. They also build an umbrella for slower informational and support type forces to operate in. The shadow of their support starts about 100km from the aircraft and closes into \"white of the eye\" range. \n\nAs to your specific question, \"what would happen to a mig-21?\". It is questionable anyone would bother with it. It couldn't engage anything. Most elements have automatic closing weapons systems that would neutralize its offensive capabilities at a great distance. It would be treated like a civilian aircraft, and most probably would be. If it did stray into dangerous locations and refused to follow guidance some kid in Denver would use an Xbox controller tied to a Reaper to take it out from about 20kms away. There would be 500 or so drones active in the theatre. An F-35 would not be deployed to take it out. Why?\n\nA bit of guesswork here, but I don't think anyone is exactly telling this. I did work in the Command and Control division for a while with Raytheon - not this field. We had the opposite job.",
"There is still an element of engagement. Think of the dogfights you know, now just strench the typical length of engagement out a bunch. \n\nNow think of this, you've managed to expend all of you missiles, but you still have your autocannon. Hmmm? Typical dogfight to ensue?",
"Check out the documentary 'Speed and Angels.' I dont know how relevant is is today (was made in 2008) but they do seem to still teach 'classic' dogfighting. [Link](_URL_2_)"
] |
How does calling an african-american "black" make you a racist? | [
"I don't think it does at all. People call me 'white' and not an American. So why would it be racist to call someone 'black' instead of African American?",
"You have to understand what the culture of the whole society of the USA was like in the 1850s, the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s to understand why such a useful and descriptive word as \"black\" to refer to someone with dark complexioned skin used to be such a term of distaste, dislike and oppression.\n\nBlacks don't use the front door, they go around the servant's entrance, even if they are not a servant. Blacks don't sit down and take a meal or a cup of tea in a room with you. Blacks aren't given a bank loan for anything, EVER. Blacks who marry your daughter get killed. Literally killed with no legal repercussions. \"Black\" is a word with lots of historical baggage in the USA.",
"I think the opposite is true in a way.\n\nPeople call blacks \"african-american\" just to AVOID using the word \"black\".\n\nMost of the time they're just... \"American\", not \"African-American\".\n\nSometimes it's just completely wrong such as with my Jamaican friends! They aren't African-American :(\n\nAlso, for some reason the rules say you can't identify as \"african-american\" is you're white which is weird... It's as if white people don't exist in Africa..."
] |
why Obama is criticized for going golfing? | [
"It's part of the partisan bickering that comes with a two party system. If the President is a member of your party and takes a break, he's been working really hard and deserves it. If he's a member of the opposition, he's a lazy bum.",
"Just like how Democrats and news agencies criticized GW Bush for spending a lot of vacation time at his ranch, Obama is criticized by his opponents for taking his own time off. No matter the president, his opponents will reach for anything they can hold against him.\n\nOf course, Bush actually did set the record for most vacation time ever taken buy a President. I haven't actually seen stats for Obama's time off, but I'd be interested to know how comparable they are.",
"People like to criticize for anything and they forgot he is a person who should get to choose what he does with his own free time away from his job.",
"Well, it's a bit funny when coming from the republicans as George W. Bush took way more vacation days.\n\nBush had an average of 128 vacation days per year. Obama has 27 days per year(as of the middle of last year). Yes that is a different of 101 days per year:P",
"Thats what everyone expects, why should he have a small bit of a normal life is what they are thinking"
] |
what is epigenetics and how does it differ from evolution? | [
"Epigenetics refers to heritable information that *not* encoded in the basepairs of your DNA (sequence of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs).\n\nEpigenetics works through a few different mechanisms, not all of which are completely understood, but include DNA methylation, histone placement and modification, and, for some organisms, subnuclear localization of chromosomes. The effects of these mechanisms are all similar: to change what genes your cells actually express.\n\nFor a long time, scientists thought that how your genetic makeup (\"genotype\") interacted with the environment (\"phenotype\") was a one was street: Your genes were your genes and if you had bad genes for your environment, you dead. Epigenetics is actually a way for your *environment* to modify your genes \"semi-permenantly\" to adapt to changes, increase survival, or increase fitness. And because epigenetics is heritable, your kids can benefit from this change as well. When conditions change again, the epigenetic changes can be reverse or in other ways changed to suit the environment."
] |
Why does anyone attend for-profit colleges like ITT Tech when anyone can attend community college? | [
"People just plain get duped. The see the ads, and it all looks legit enough. You go into the sales meeting, and the representatives are trained to do literally whatever it takes to convince people to sign on for attending the schools. It's not until it's too late that they realize how worthless the degree is after they graduate.\n\nCommunity Colleges are, however unfairly, seen as \"lesser\" degrees than other schools. For Profits like ITT Tech prey on that and manage to convince people who don't matter that their degrees aren't worth even less.",
"One of the main reasons to go to a trade school is to be certified in a certain field. This can help someone get a job or start a career in that specific trade taught. Community Colleges are for associate degrees. This is a much more generalized degree that does not allow you to specialize (at least not greatly) in one field. Most community colleges are set up to prep you for you standard 4 year university. \n\nWith an AS/AA you might have a harder time finding a job because you are more generally educated, but you have more options on the field you go into. With a trade school degree/certification, you know what field you are going into and would have a hard time finding another field job that would hire you. Based on the training you have received at least. \n\nThese school are not always scams, but they do serve a very different purpose from CC. It really depends on what you want to do.\n\nI am speaking generally, of course.",
"CC are great and lot of folks use them to transfer to a 4 year U. I went to El Camino College and it was pretty rad and high level."
] |
Why is it that in the USA you will most likely always have a criminal record if you have been accused of a crime, even if you were never convicted or were later found to be wrongfully convicted? | [
"Having something on your record isn't the same as being guilty. The record would simply say you were charged but found not guilty, in the same way an officer would still make a note that he gave you a verbal warning even if he didn't write you an actual ticket. It's just a record of your interaction with the justice system.\n\nIn exceedingly rare circumstances, ie there wasn't even real evidence to warrant you being investigated or charged, let alone found guilty, you can have the record *expunged* which makes it as if it never happened. But this really is reserved for outrageous police incompetence or conspiracy.\n\nI have no idea what the other guy is talking about with DUIs and getting arrested. If you get pulled over for driving intoxicated, the officer will place you under arrest. You will be charged with DUI and go before a judge. Most people get arrested before they end up in court and get convicted, that's kinda the entire way the system works.",
"short answer: it's all about record keeping. \n\nLonger answer: Every piece of paper that goes through a police department or court has to be kept track of. You were charged with a crime, arrested for said crime, then it was dismissed later. The paperwork has to leave that trail showing that. It can't just magically disappear. \n\nEven getting a record expunged or sealed doesn't make it disappear. Its simply pulled from your public record and put into its own file, which 90% of the public no longer has access to, the other 10% are mainly court or government officials.",
"It's called a RAP sheet for a reason. Record of Arrests and Prosecutions.",
"That's not true. A criminal record is your convictions. There's an arrest record too, but arrests can be expunged if someone's found not guilty. Once an arrest happens though it's public knowledge. Getting an arrest expunged gets it off the official record but private companies today track every arrest and they can keep it forever.",
"We have NO privacy laws. None. Any jerkweed can access the NCIC and look at your arrest record.\n\nLike my brother, who was rounded up with a bunch of Occupy Assholes because he was walking home from work. Innocent guy just trying to get home, arrested, fingerprinted, now in the NCIC. Great fucking job, coppers.",
"If someone gets arrested, but not convicted, for the same crime multiple times, that's pretty suspicious and could be important if they get arrested yet again. A single incident is probably meaningless, but if you don't keep track of single incidents, you'll never be able to notice patterns.",
"Your ARREST record will show all the details of your arrest and trial. Your CRIMINAL record will be clean. If you're acquitted, you can petition to have your record expunged.",
"Because we are assholes. Haven't you figured it out yet?"
] |
How does "RNG"/Random work in Video games? | [
"Pseudo-random number generators use an algorithm to generate a number. The algorithm starts with a \"seed\" value to create the number. Then it crunches through the algorithm (essentially a formula). \n \nSince it is an algorithm, if the seed is the same, the result is the same. So systems will try to pick a seed value that is essentially random. For example, when the event occurs that triggers the RNG, take a few of the least significant numbers of the system clock. \n \nSuch a system is generally good enough for a video game \"random\" number. If you are using cryptography to protect something valuable, however, you might want something that is more robust.",
"Awesome responses. I've seen this question been answered before, but the premise of a \"seeded\" number is a bit confusing :)."
] |
Bandwidth. What exactly is it and how does it work? | [
"Bandwidth originally is from transmission techniques that use bands of frequencies (eg: radio waves). Each station gets a range of frequencies to use (called a band) and is allowed to fill up that band with their broadcast transmission.\n\nWith clever technologies, you can send multiple different broadcasts within the band you were given. the size of the range, or bandwidth, determined just how many streams of information you could send at once.\n\nMore generally, the term is now used to refer to how much stuff can be sent through something at one time. For instance, if you have a 100 Mbps connection, it means you are able to send, at most, 100 million bits of information through the connection every second.\n\nTL;DR: bandwidth is the maximum amount of stuff we can stuff through a pipe within a given time frame.",
"Let's make believe data is water in a lake. Then there's a dam that holds the water. The dam delivers water to nearby town via pipes. The MAXIMUM amount of water that can flow through the pipes is called bandwidth. There are things along the way that change the maximum allowable flow. Like latency, different protocols or distance. The final amount of flowing water at the end of the pipes is called throughput. The actual number that you see when it gets to someones house. Theoretically the dam can provide billions of gallons of water per second. But realistically you only see a few million per second by the time it gets to your house. That's the same concept when it comes to data."
] |
how come the rings of Saturn orbit on a flat plane around the planet, as opposed to evenly spread out? | [
"Same reason why the planets are in a relatively horizontal plane around the sun.\n\nAngular momentum is conserved, so as orbiting materials collide, they eventually settle into a disk.\n\nWhat conservation of angular momentum means, is that the total sum of each particles momentum, must but equal to their ending momentum. So you get a lot of chaotic collisions when the cloud first starts, but as more and more collisions take place, more and more of the upward and downward momentum is converted into horizontal momentum. This creates the plane or disk."
] |
How do people who went through transsexual procedures change their voice? | [
"Basically it's hormones. Women who transition to men will notice a bigger change in their voice when they start taking male hormones. But, men who transition after they've gone through puberty won't be able to change as much because the physical changes the voice box goes through at that time are hard to undo.",
"I was listening to an interview with a trans gender girl on the radio the other day. She says it's just practice",
"Sometimes they will undergo vocal cord surgery but a lot of it is training and practise.\n\nThere is a British tv documentary series called Ladyboys showing MtF transitions and some of them underwent intense speech therapy to help pick up appropriate speech patterns and mannerisms. I really enjoyed it, you should check it out if you can find it."
] |
Why are college textbooks so expensive when other non-fiction authors - ie Noam Chomsky - release books on similar topics for substantially less? | [
"The simple answer is, of course, because they can. Students are required to buy their books, so they can charge whatever they want for them.\n\nTo elaborate on some other points:\n\n* Noam Chomsky's books probably don't have massive problem sets and accompanying solutions -- those take a *lot* of time to come up with.\n* Other books tend to not have nearly as many pictures, drawings, and diagrams. Someone has to get paid for all of those.\n* Typesetting plain text non-fiction books takes much less time than typesetting a 1000 page book with 5 pictures and 6 different fonts on each page.\n* Textbooks will probably go by many more editors and reviewers before being published compared to non-peer reviewed non-fiction\n* Textbooks are almost always hardcover, which is more expensive, and they are often glossy full color pages, which are more expensive",
"Supply and demand. You need the book so they can charge anything"
] |
When cloning an animal (let's say a dog), how much of that cloned animal is exactly the same as the original animal? | [
"Essentially, a clone of an animal is the same thing as an identical twin. 100% match genetically, but everything else is a wildcard. \n\nAnything that is directly genetically controlled will be the same, such eye or fur color. \n\nAnything that is affected by environment, habits, temperament, coat quality, size, health, etc... Will be up to chance essentially.",
"this is hard to answer as this argument deals with the whole nature vs nurture debate. \n\nlooks wise, they will look the same baring some environmental disaster. personality/habits would also depend on how they were raised.",
"Well, it depends on the dog. Grossly, probably pretty similar. \n\nIf the coat color was solid, then it would probably have the same coat color. But if it was a pattern, the exact pattern would be different. Also, point mutations in individual follicles would create those odd mis-colored hairs in a completely different patterns in either case.\n\nIf you have a breed that can have either floppy or straight ears, what you end up having could be of a different type in your clone than the parent. This is because ear shape isn't directly controlled by gene(s), rather in the level of hormone expression during development Environmental factors during development can alter hormone levels and you could end up with entirely different ears.\n\nBehavior, temperament, personality - total crap shoot. All tings being equal they may come out very similar, but even identical twins can have radically different personalities from day 1, to say nothing about how experiences may change such traits as the animal experiences life.",
"So most of the responses assume one hundred percent genetic identity. I think this is wrong. One cloning technique is Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, so basically the nucleus of a cell is inserted into an egg cell. The resulting organism will have the mitochondria of the mother of the egg cell and not the mitochondria of the line that it came from.\n\nThis can lead to some differences. At least some scientists have suggested that this is one of the problems with cloning (the lack of match)\n\nMost of our DNA is in our nucleus, but each of our mitochondria (which is the powerhouse of the cell) has it's own DNA. It is a little inaccurate to say that such a clone would be genetically identical to the original. The differences in mitochondria can be important.\n\nThere is of course also developmental issues as well which many people in thread talk about.",
"Behaviors are not all genetic, many are formed through experiences. If you took two genetically identical dogs and left one with an animal abuser, one with a loving family, the first might end up being far more timid or aggressive than the second. That has nothing to do with genes."
] |
Please explain this joke, I'm having a hard time | [
"It sounds like an anti-joke. The standard setup is inverted and that is the cause of the humor. The bartender sees the joke coming and want's nooo trouble in his place. \n\nI don't think it's funny, but we've all got different tastes in that regard.",
"I've heard the punchline as, \"What is this, some kind of joke?\" \n\nThe bartender realizes that it's a stereotypical setup and doesn't want to be the butt of the joke.",
"It is like \"why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side\". An anti joke.",
"Usually a joke like this continues into a discussion/scenario where each of the individuals stereotypes are exploited however in this case the bartender is so exceedingly racist he immediately turns them away before anything else can take place. It's for the shock value.",
"its just cause the bartender is racist, so he wants them to get the fuck out of here!"
] |
What happens in a factory to cause chocolates such as Kitkats to be made without the Wafer inside? | [
"Usually that would be some issue in timing, and given how fast the line moves for something mass market like candy, a little \"off\" timing can create some real problems. In the case of Kit Kat, it's probably usually an issue of the wafer bouncing out of, or missing the mould, which then just gets filled with chocolate."
] |
NES games could be up to 1MB in total size, but Final Fantasy II for Android is 170MB. What is the additional 169MB? | [
"MIDI music resembling actual instruments as opposed to a simple chiptune and far more detailed graphics for the most part. It may not sound like much, but remember that 170 MB is but a small fraction of what a CD can hold; but a small drop in modern technology."
] |
Why do extremely big things seem to move slower and extremely small things seem to move faster?(Realtive to human hight etc.) | [
"If something extremely big moved without it looking slow it'd have to have close to supernatural strength.\n\nTake a human that has 3 times our height, and everything in proportions. That'd mean it has about 27 times our mass. Not if he moves on the same rate as we do, it'd take 27 time as much energy as is, but to appear moving on the same rate as we are (effectively travel 3 times the distance) it'd take 81 times as much energy.\n\nThere is no living creature that could intake 81 times as much energy as we do - basically eat and drink as much a day as we do in 3 months' time.",
"You said it, perception of scale. Bigger objects are simply bigger, it takes more speed to travel their full length compared to a smaller object, at least in the same amount of time.",
"Power/mass ratio. Power in animals is determined by the cross section of muscles (an area) while mass is volume. If you scale things up, volume grows more than area, so big animals have less power/mass ratio and accelerate slowlier, and the opposite if you scale things down.",
"Also: bigger body parts (arms, legs, head) have more mass and as such thus take more time and energy to move and to stop."
] |
Why do we need discipline? | [
"Discipline is what keeps you going when you run out of motivation for a task.\n\nImagine you're climbing a mountain. You have more motivation than people just sitting in front of the TV because you want to drive out and climb that mountain! You get to the base of the trail, get all your gear, and pump yourself up for the climb!\n\nBut as you start climbing, your motivation starts to waver. You don't think you're in shape enough for the climb. Maybe it was more difficult than you expected. The sunny day seems to be getting more cloudy and it might rain.\n\nWhen you run out of motivation, you probably just want to go back home. This is when discipline kicks in. Even though you're suffering now and your motivation is gone, you still want to power through it because the climb may be worth it in the end.\n\nSelf-discipline (also sometimes called \"grit\") is one of the best traits in a person because it is necessary for people to complete tasks. It's very easy to start something but it's difficult to see it through. There's a rule called the 80/20 rule where completing the first 80% of a task takes 20% of the time while the last 20% takes 80% of the time. It's very motivating in the beginning to see something progress quickly but it takes discipline to spend a great deal of time finishing the job.",
"First, you (and I'd say a lot of other people too) need to look up the definition. Second, self-discipline allows you to make the right decisions in your life using critical thinking and to make yourself better (in every aspect) even though you may not necessarily want to. Literally means: \"the ability to control one's feelings and overcome one's weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it\". So instead of like..... pounding down that half tub of ice cream every night, put it away and grab some carrots and hummus instead."
] |
If you went back 10 years with an iphone 6 and handed it to a high-tech corporation to dissect. Could they use it to increase the rate of technology? | [
"It would very likely be a mixture. The UI and design could be picked up on easily enough\n\nThe actual manufacturing of the phone in large quantities would be difficult. Especially for things like the screen resolution.\n\nEven with the tech example the high res screen would costs tons if it were even possible to create it.\n\nThey would definitely take parts of it as good examples and possibly clone them. But they would not be able to make the same phone for a while.\n\nEven if they created one at the time it would cost well over $1000 for the single phone.\n\nIt would not be cost effective to create copies.\n\nNow they could make lower quality clones and use the UI and design aspects quite easily. That then brings up the idea that apple released the first iphone about 9 years ago. So the company you sell it to would need to act very quickly, more quickly than possible to produce a lower quality clone to beat apple to the punch.\n\nBut it would still give them an advantage so long as it was given to a very wealthy company.\n\nFive year old answer: They would think it's cool and maybe use a little of it. It would give them some smart ideas.",
"There might be a few neat ideas that they could learn from it, like the placement of the fingerprint sensor. But they wouldn't be able to re-create the processors because they wouldn't know how to make processors that are etched with features so small and looking at the device wouldn't tell them how to do it. Ten years ago, processor features were 65nm wide. Now they're ~~28nm~~ 14nm wide which lets them fit more things on each chip. That's much of the reason why new devices are faster.\n\nEDIT: thanks /u/m1l4droid for reminding me that I missed a couple steps down since I last bought a computer.",
"There's not a lot of useful stuff you can learn by dissecting a phone. Well, not in the sense of making a copy. Most of the stuff that they could actually learn by dissection would already be understood by them.\n\nNow, talking about what matters - the SoC and its fabrication process - you can't do anything on that regard. You can take microscope images of the die all you want, you'll see some fascinating stuff but not the ability to recreate one: you'd never actually get the full transistor-level design of the chip, nor would examining it help in recreating the required manufacturing process faster.\n\nI guess analyzing the screen could mean something, you might recreate a high-density screen like that faster if given a working example - but you wouldn't be recreating the phone itself. Still kinda useful. The camera CCD would also yield something good, though it's possibly limited by similar manufacturing process problems you'd face with the SoC."
] |
How come some phones/cars can supercharge like 40% of the battery in minutes, but the remaining of the battery takes hours to fully charge? | [
"Think of it like a balloon you are trying to blow up. You can start huffing and puffing with great abandon as the balloon isn't going to pop. but when it gets to certain size you start to worry, You want the balloon bigger but you worry it might go bang. So you have to slow your puffing down.",
"Typically, they measure the battery charge by measuring the voltage across the battery. So let's take an example. A 12V battery. 10.8V is flat as. Nothing left. 13.2 is fully charged. (I just did 10% either side. It's close enough to be good enough). So you put a charger on it and away you go. \nHowever, the more difference there is in voltage, the faster change occurs. So, let's say you put 13.2V in to charge, there is more difference between that and 10.8 so charge happens nice and quickly. Then as it charges, the voltage gets higher. And the difference is less, so it slows down. Here's a graphical representation: _URL_0_ \nThus, the less difference between the charging voltage and the battery voltage, the less current. The less current, the less charge."
] |
What is the "revolving door" in politics? | [
"When you work in government agencies, you build up contacts within those agencies. Then, when you leave, you get hired - for fairly substantial salaries - to lobby your former colleagues on behalf of people who have business with that agency.\n\nThe questionable part about this arises because you *know* that's your career path. So when you're attempting to perform your duties for the government, you're also in charge of regulating the same people who will - in a few short years - be paying you hundreds of thousands of dollars to do little more than take your former colleagues out for drinks.\n\nThe 'revolving' part comes into play when you're high enough in the hierarchy that you cycle in/out based on political cycles. So you'll spend some time in government building up your contacts, then some time in the private sector exploiting those contacts for a big payday.",
"Generally what people mean by the \"revolving door\" is government executives moving between regulatory agencies and the businesses they regulate. It isn't uncommon, for example, for high ranking Treasury officials to have been employed by banks and brokerage firms. Often multiple different times. \n\nPeople object to this because they feel that these executives get a little too friendly with the people they're supposed to be policing."
] |
I have seen some of the recent North Korean propaganda about the USA. How much of what we know about the terrible things going on in NK can be confirmed, and are we subject to lies/propaganda about what it's like there? | [
"There is a book called Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick which was written with input from six people who defected from North Korea. The are very candid about what living conditions were like there and what they were told about China, Russia and the US.",
"Yeah, I highly recommend you check out some stuff about life in North Korea. It's super interesting- every single thing they learn is infused with nationalist propaganda.\n\nAnd I know a lot of people have this same conflict in the US- looking at all the propaganda people are being brainwashed under, how can we know for sure that we ourselves are not laboring under the same delusion?\n\nMy answer to this is that you should go by how free speech, press, and distribution of information is. For its shortcomings, this is one thing that the US does very well- better than, many agree, any other country in the world. So although here in the US we have *tons* and *tons* of media and information that seems biased or slanted or propaganda-y one way or another, the fact is that any side is allowed to present its viewpoint, since media is free. This means if we ever do believe something then it's of our own free will (whether that's very informed or not), and it *isn't* propaganda."
] |
Why does lemon juice "cook" fish when making ceviche? | [
"It doesn't actually cook the fish. The acid just denatures the proteins in fish meat in a similar process to cooking. It won't, for instance, kill pathogens in the fish.",
"Proteins are very long chains of a type of molecule called amino acid, hundreds or thousands of them. These chains tangle in a more or less random way (called protein folding), however organisms guide the tangling process so they end up in a specific shape that makes them useful.\n\nWhen you apply heat to a protein, these chains will move, and if they become hot enough, they might untangle a bit and then tangle again, which can cause them to change their shape. This process is called \"denaturisation\", and is what makes meat, fish and egg change their colour and texture if you heat it up.\n\nAcids like lemon juice will lower the forces that hold the chains together, which makes it easier to untangle them. Therefore, the temperature at which a protein will denaturate is lowered.\n\nBut as StupidLemonEater pointed out, this will not affect bacteria and parasites that can survive the stomach acid, which are usually killed off by high temperature. In that regard, you need to be just as careful as when you're making sashimi or carpacio."
] |
How do they match a single fingerprint against all the millions of fingerprints in the fingerprint database? | [
"There's different ways a computer can do image comparison. One way is basically break down a fingerprint onto something like [grid paper](_URL_1_) with x,y positions.\n\nThen my fingerprint will say something like: Black at (4,5), Black at (4,6), White at (4,7), Black at (4,8) etc. hundreds or thousands of times. Like [this](_URL_0_).\n\nThen you can compare all these grid co-ordinates to another fingerprint. If say 99% of the squares are filled the same (Black or White) that's a good match.\n\nThis is obviously a lot of work, but computers are great at doing millions of simple fixed logical comparisons in a very fast time.\n\nThere's other ways to tackle this. There's also surrounding problems programmers need to solve too, like \"centering\" images so that they aren't off by one, how do you handle a fingerprint that's \"bolder with thicker lines\", etc.",
"By classifying different shapes and patterns that appear in fingerprints and using them to narrow the search. Fingerprint systems where created back the days when fingerprints where searched manually in books.\n\nFor a moment think about searching for a face. You have a million mugshots and you want someone (without a computer) to search for one that matchs a particular suspect. So you start classifying the features of the face: What color is the skin, is the nose flat or pointy, is the head oval, rectangular, triangular, are the lips thin or thick and so on. You give a letter or number to each of those features so that it creates a code, like WO7SK. Now there will be hundreds of faces that are identified as WO7SK but it has narrowed down the search by a lot. If you organize your mugshots using this system (so you have a cabinet for codes starting with W, with a binder for codes starting with WO, etc) you can find someone with only a short search.\n\nThe same is done for fingerprints, originally with a paper system and now with computers. A fingerprint is identified as being in one of three categories, an arch, a loop or a whorl and then from there into one of several subcategories (like a tented arch or radial loop). Further features within the fingerprint like the number of ridges or the shape of a delta or core will further narrow down the classification. From there either a human or a computer can manually compare the fingerprint with others that match that classification."
] |
Why were popular songs of the 50's so short (2 min) in comparison to popular songs of today (4-5 min)? | [
"Up until the early 60s the most singles were distributed on 10\" 78rpm records which could, at most, hold about 3 minutes of audio per side."
] |
Could quantum entanglement be used for long distant instant communications/High bandwidth data transfer? | [
"> From what I understand, once you entangle two (or more?) quantum bits a change in one bit's state will immediately affect the state of the other.\n\nThis is the main reason most people misunderstand the entanglement. Changes to one particle does not affect the other once they are split up.\n\nEntangled particles are more like a sheet of paper with 'A' and 'B' written on it. Cut the paper in half so one letter is on each piece and stuff them in separate envelopes. Send someone with one envelope to a far off place while the other stays put. The far off person can check their envelope at any time and know what was left behind. If the traveler has B in their envelope, then they know that A was left behind. Erasing the B and writing in C does nothing to the piece of paper which has A on it.",
"Not for faster-than-light communication. It's part of the model of relativity that neither mass nor information can travel faster than c."
] |
Histogram on my camera screen | [
"A histogram is simply a graph of the amount of colour in the image. So for example if your lens cap is on, the graph will have one side with a very high rating and the rest with a low rating. If your shooting the sun the opposite will be true as the sun will over power the camera making the whole picture white and the histogram very weighted to the white side.\n\nSome camera's will display multiple histograms that allow you the see the amount of red/green/blue in the image.\n\nThey are used by photographer that are really concern about shadows and highlights and determining how much information is in them. So for example if I wanted to take a picture where half the person face is in darkness I would look at the histogram to make sure about half the value of the image is black.",
"The histogram is a graph of how much of the picture has any given level of light.\n\nBlack is at the far left of the histogram, white is at the far right, and the height of the graph indicates how much of the picture is at that level."
] |
Does a YouTube video with a static image use the same amount of data as a normal YouTube video? | [
"No. A static image will be compressed a lot more by the video editing software. There are fewer keyframes for the software to deal with and make pixels for, so it's a lot \"simpler\" for the software to shrink the video down. \n\nTo see this for yourself, you can use a youtube video downloader and download a music video for a song, then download a video for the same song that uses a static image. The static image should be drastically smaller than the one with actual video. \n\nIf you don't want to hassly with downloading videos, just watch the loading bar for a video that has plenty of slow, still shots and a few quick cuts with drastic movements. You'll see that (on a slow enough connection) the slow scenes load quicker than the quick ones. This is the same effect of compression software being able to squeeze more video into a smaller amount of data."
] |
Why are most batteries 1.5v or multiples of 1.5v? | [
"The reason for this is chemistry. A single cell of a alkaline battery (i.e. your \"normal\" battery) has a voltage of about 1.5V (when full). This voltage does not change if the battery becomes bigger or smaller. If you want to have a higher voltage, a battery is made by connecting more than one cell in series (you can see the single cells in [this example](_URL_0_)).\n\nOther types of batteries can have similar voltages per cell (a zinc–carbon cell has also 1.5V) or different voltages (e.g. a lithium ion cell has about 3.2-3.7V, depending on the type).\n\nCars and trucks use lead acid batteries which are made by connecting 6 or 12 cells in series, each cell has about 2.1V (no load, when full) so we call these 12V or 24V batteries.",
"The voltage that a battery produces is entirely dependent on what type of chemicals are used to store the energy.\n\nA battery is made up of cells that have this chemical inside and the chemical reaction that gives a battery it's electrical energy determines what the voltage of a \"cell\" is. \n\n_URL_1_\n\nThe most common non-rechargeable battery found in stores are alkaline batteries and for alkaline batteries the \"cell\" voltage is 1.5V.\n\nThe relationship between a cell and a battery is that a single cell is one instance of the chemical reaction that generates a batteries electrical current. A battery is usually made up of one or more cells.\n\nIf you line up cells in a row where (+) positive connects to (-) negative for each cell in between the voltages of each cell add up and this is called being in series (one after the other). If you connect the cells inside a battery where all the (+) ends are connected and all the (-) ends are connected the voltage stays at 1.5V but a lot more electrons (proportional to the number of cells) can flow out resulting in higher \"current\" measured in Amps (A). This is ELI5 so for better or worse you can think of voltage as how fast an electron is moving when it comes out of a battery and the current as how many electrons come out.\n\nIf you line up 3 cells in a battery in series the electrons will flow out of the battery at 3 times the speed of a single cell. If you lineup 3 cells in parallel the electrons will come out at the speed of a single cell but there can be up to 3 times as many electrons.\n\nSo to answer the original question a batteries voltage will always be a mutliple of the cell voltage that makes up a battery and the cell voltage is determined by the chemical used to store and produce the electrical charge.",
"Originally, chemistry. \n\nThe basic \"cell\" we started mass manufacturing could (as a result of its internal chemistry) produce 1.5v. When applications needed higher voltage, the cells were linked up to each other (in series) to produce \"batteries\" that were multiples of 1.5v.\n\nWe have better technology and in effect produce cells with a wider range of voltages (Li batteries in your phone for instance I believe has a terminal voltage of 3.7v which is not a multiple of 1.5) \n\nwe continue to make and use 1.5 (and multiples) batteries coz they are now standard. If you had a toy that already takes 1.5v batteries, what would you do with a new battery that is 2.4v? New applications can and do use other voltages like the cellphones"
] |
How do we know so much about the different stages of a star's life if they last for such a long time? | [
"We can examine the life stages of a human without having to watch one in particular for its entire life.\n\nSimilarly with stars, we see them at all different stages of their lives. We see the transitional states so we know in what order they occur."
] |
Difference between "buffering" and "loading" | [
"Just technicalities. Buffering is partially loading something for streaming. Loading is loading the entire thing",
"Buffering is really just pre-loading.. It's basically just loading something before someone is actually going to see the information.\n\nAs a picture loads, you see the picture start to appear on your screen. When a video is buffering, it's really just loading up more frames of the video, ones you haven't actually seen yet.\n\nLoading is a more generic term for getting content ready for viewing, whether it's at that moment, or in the near future. Buffering is specifically get content ready for consumption ahead of time so there's less lag or wait time. If you buffer a video ahead of time (like on Netflix), then even if your internet connection can't quite load the video as fast as it's playing, you still have the 'buffer' there to prevent the video from stuttering."
] |
Since the US president is the commander in chief of the armed forced, how does the US constitution prevent him from planning a coup and ordering the military to do something potentially unconstitutional? | [
"The Oath taken by all military personnel is to support and defend the Constitution. Training is given reminding servicemembers (especially commissioned officers) that they should not obey an unlawful or unconstitutional order.",
"A military officer is not required to follow an illegal order. For instance, an officer can refuse to act if he is ordered to shoot unarmed civilians.\nAnd like the other poster stated, the Posse Comitatus laws prevent military forces from being used for domestic purposes.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The constitution is a piece of paper. It doesn't prevent anyone from doing anything. If it did, then no one could do anything unconstitutional.\n\nSo the only thing preventing a President from using the military to stage a coup is the military's willingness to go along with it. If he got the backing of the entire US military then we're fucked. Even if state militias and national guards band together to rebel, I doubt they're equipped to successfully repel the might of the US Military.\n\nBut I think it'd be extremely unlikely that any president could muster the entire US military. It's simply too large and too diverse.",
"A constitution can never prevent a coup because a coup is by definition unconstitutional. But the armed forces can ignore any unconstitutional command. Every soldier has the right to ignore any unlawful order by the way."
] |
The universe is expanding, but where is the center of the expansion? is that the point in which the big bang happened? And where are we relatively to it? | [
"Every point is expanding away from every other point. There's no \"center of the expansion\".\n\nImagine an infinitely large rubber sheet, with a 1\" grid drawn on it.\n\nNow stretch out the rubber sheet so that the grid lines are 2\" apart instead, everywhere. Is there a \"center\" to this stretching? Every point is moving away from every other point.",
"The idea is that space itself was a product of the big bang. So every point around you and in the universe was concentrated at a single point at the beginning. This would make every point in the universe the center of the universe.\n\nSo the universe is expanding relative to every point in the universe. A result of that is that no matter where you look from, the universe is always expanding outwards.",
"If you were to bake a fruitcake, you put the raw mix into the oven and it begins to expand and rise.\n\nThe pieces of fruit inside the cake are moving away from each other inside the fruitcake mix. From each piece of fruits perspective every other piece is moving away from it. If there is any center, then the individual piece is it because every other piece is moving away with expansion.",
"This is a common question both [in ELI5](_URL_2_) and is in the /r/askscience FAQ ([once](_URL_1_), [twice](_URL_0_)).\n\nTip: askscience will get you more accurate answers.\n\ntl;dr There is no center. The universe is infinite. Everything expands away from everything else.",
"There is no center. All points are expanding away from all other points. As a result, if you want to get down to brass tacks, the Big Bang occurred at **all** points in the Universe."
] |
Isn't the CBC reporting on Jian Ghomeshi a conflict of interest? | [
"It is a conflict of interest.\n\nNews organizations have conflicts of interest all the time, but that doesn't mean they stop reporting news.\n\nJournalism ethics says so long as you disclose the conflict, so people can judge if you are being biased, you are covered.",
"The criminal investigation of the allegations levied against him and his lawsuit with regards to his dismissal from the CBC are separate entities. Reporting on the allegations against him does not necessarily impact the outcome of the lawsuit.\n\nPlus, it would make it a *really* easy way to suppress news coverage if suing people was all it took. Perhaps he could sue all the news media groups...I'm sure he could find something to file a lawsuit over, and even if its bogus, that can take a while to clear up.",
"I'm not familiar with this particular story, but one might argue that the CBC has a responsibility to report news that is important, regardless of their own stake in it.\n\nOf course, the 24-hour news cycle isn't exactly known for presenting what people need to hear instead of what they want to hear.",
"Are they expected to report positively or neutrally? Then yes. But there is also nothing illegal about having an opinion even if that opinion has obvious origins."
] |
How would acquiring (for lack of a better word) temperatures below absolute zero be used to provide obscenely large amounts of energy? | [
"In a normal system (ie. one with a positive temperature), adding energy results in an increase in \"entropy\" - the tiny bits and pieces (atoms, etc) that make up the system move around more.\n\nIn a system with [negative temperature](_URL_0_), the bits and pieces that make up the system already have as much entropy as they possibly can - their entropy level is saturated. Heating them further *reduces* their entropy.\n\nThis is not possible with a normal system in classical physics. But it can occur with some quantum systems.\n\nHow does this provide large amounts of energy? I don't think it does. It *requires* relatively large amounts of energy. For a system to reach entropy saturation, it has to have a large amount of energy before it can even get into negative temperatures - but I don't think it *provides* large amounts of energy.\n\nI may be wrong here though. This whole field is very new. [Here is an article](_URL_1_) describing it being achieved - the article doesn't say when this happened, but the date on the article is earlier this year. It also discusses some of the potential uses of this state - for example, creating a gas cloud that defies gravity - but there's no mention of providing large amounts (or any amount) of energy."
] |
Where do files go once they're deleted? I just don't accept that they disappear... | [
"Imagine your hard drive as a giant wall, like the Great Wall of China. \n\nNow imagine that your files are painted on this wall (Images, text, music notes). \n\nWhen you delete a file, your computer finds the spot on the wall where that file was painted, and marks that section of the wall as \"free\". It doesn't scrub off the painting, but the next time your computer needs to store a file, it can just re-paint over the \"free\" portion of the wall, and that's when the original painting will be gone/replaced. \n\nThe computer *could* scrub away the painting at the moment you delete the file, but marking it \"free\" is quicker and takes less work. There *are* ways to tell your computer to scrub off the painting at the moment you delete the file, but normally there's no need to do that. You can even run a program later on that will walk along the entire wall, and scrub off any old paintings.",
"They don't go anywhere! Your computer just marks the space they occupy as available, and records over the space the next time it needs room.\n\nNow, most computers consider space marked for deletion to be free, so when you \"delete\" something it just appears as free. That's because \"the file is still here, but the next time I need room I'm going to overwrite this area of your disk\" is a silly thing to say."
] |
Toll Roads | [
"Most roads are funded by taxes. Everyone pays for them whether they use it or not. Some, though, are too expensive to build and maintain. Or, they are used by lots of people from outside the area, so it is unfair to tax only the local citizens. Or, sometimes a private company will build a road they think they can make money on because the government hasn't put one there. \n\nIn those cases, they put up tolls to pay for the road and maintenance. Only people who use the road pay for it. The government or private company makes enough to keep up the road, and maybe even makes a profit. \n\nThe problem with the government doing it is that once the road is paid for it is hard to take down the tolls, because that involves firing people and cutting off a big revenue stream.",
"Every road needs maintenance and repair over time. Who should pay for it? If you answer \"those who use the road,\" then that is what tolls are. If you only use it a few times a year, you are not paying that much in tolls. If you are a regular commuter, then you use it frequently, and pay more. Also, 18 wheelers put considerable stresses on roads from their weight, so they have a different pay structure for tolls (often dollars instead of cents)."
] |
How we can say the earth is tilted on it's axis, when it's a sphere? | [
"The tilt is the angle between earths rotational axis and the orbital axis (the plane of the orbit around the sun). [Like this](_URL_0_)",
"What is meant by \"tilted\" is that the earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the plane of its rotation around the sun."
] |
Are the traditional measures of horsepower & torque in an internal combustion engine really applicable and/or comparable when considering EVs (i.e. Tesla)? Why or why not? | [
"Yes, Power and torque are still actual measurements of the capabilities of the vehicle."
] |
how the hell did line dancing to "aches breaky heart" become a Mexican party tradition? | [
"I have no idea but you should repost this to /r/TIL as \n\n > TIL line dancing to \"achey breaky heart\" is a Mexican party tradition.",
"They think it's fun to dance to. It's super simple and anyone can get into it I've seen kids rock out along. Also, you have to understand they don't dance to achey breaky heart, they dance to [no rompas mas](_URL_1_) Which is just a reimagined and translated cover of Cyrus' song followed by the sister song [el payaso del rodeo](_URL_0_). I wouldn't call it tradition either, no one leaves one of those parties upset if they didnt hear the song play. I think you've just been lucky to hear at every mexican party.",
"As a mexican, I can say 99% of all weddings and graduations dance to these songs, i think its because everyone can dance to it, so nobody feels left out, even if you mess up"
] |
The hullabaloo over The Hobbit being filmed at 48 FPS, and why a lot of people consider that a bad thing? | [
"Explaining it from your frame of reference: most computer monitors function at 60hz, or 60 frames per second. Games render discrete frames over time, and when 60 frames are played back it looks smooth. When the framerate drops to 30 or so everything starts to look choppy.\n\nFilm on the other hand functions at 24 frames per second. The reason it looks smooth is because film captures the *motion* inherent in the frame. So where in a game you would see a choppy picture because an element or a character moved from point a to point b instantaneously, in film there is motion blur instead. This means that where it was choppy before, the motion blur eases the transition between frames and makes it look smooth.\n\nBy doubling the framerate and shooting at 48 fps, the filmmakers are effectively cutting the motion blur between frames in half, leading to a more defined (i.e. clearer, less blurry) image. The reason some people think this is \"bad\" is because 24 fps is a very historic standard and one of the large things that contributes to the film \"look.\" Arguably, the standard of \"clearer\" is not \"better.\" Many soap operas and TV shows are also filmed at higher framerates like that, contributing to the argument that it looks \"cheap.\"",
"soap operas are filmed in higher FPS. This means it DOES have the \"look\" of a soap opera. But it also means it has a better, smoother picture.\n\nIt's perception and tradition at play here, that's all. I don't know why it would make people sick, besides it being more action then most people are used to seeing at that high of a FPS (although games should have the same effect for those people)",
"To add on to what has already been said, mostly every viewing of The Hobbit so far has been in IMAX. The screen on IMAX is much bigger and the sound is much more rich and distinct. There have been many people that have gotten sick watching an IMAX movie in 24 FPS. Our eyes have adjusted to years of watching a movie on a normal theater screen at the normal FPS rate. When movies started coming out in color people complained that it didn't look right. IMHO In five years most all big blockbuster movies will be shot at 48FPS.",
"We are used to seeing moving things blur when we track them with out eyes. Lower frame rates have a natural blur that is more like what we see in a natural environment when we actually have to track movement with our eyes. Higher frame rates capture an unnatural level of detail for some types of motion which tricks some peoples eyes and makes them dizzy.",
"Because it looks EXTREMELY different than we are used to. \n\nEver see those tv's with the high fps? Ever notice how weird they look? Same thing."
] |
Why does everyone hate comic sans? | [
"This should explain it both entertainingly and fiveyearoldishly.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I think it probably stems from the fact it looks like something a five year old would use, unprofessional and such. Beyond that I think it's just something that's \"cool\" to hate, like Nickleback.",
"The typical answer is that Comic Sans is used in inappropriate places (like warning signs or official documentation), and this misuse has spread to a general dislike of it.\n\nFor me, it's mostly that it's overused, period. It's shorthand for 'whimsical', but it is in fact just generic cheese.",
"[Previously on ELIF.](_URL_2_)\n\n[The best explanation I've seen.](_URL_2_)",
"I refuse to join the hate-wagon for comic sans. I teach elementary school and the font is MUCH easier for my kids to read.",
"Comics Sans was created to resemble comic book-style writing. A font that resembles a comic book isn't very professional.",
"[This question has been asked an average of twice a month.](_URL_3_)",
"Overexposure. There's nothing really objectionable about the font itself, although there are much better comic fonts available. It's packaged with Windows so it's widely available, and for that reason people use it for just about everything. All that exposure, plus the fact that it's easily identifiable, have lead to a backlash of sorts.",
"Not only is it greatly misused, it's also just a [badly designed font](_URL_4_).",
"It was meant specifically for a certain young-ish age group, but for no apparent reason it caught on everywhere and became ubiquitous. And then our \"too cool for anything mainstream\" hipster society (which is over represented on the internet) denounces it and it becomes a \"I can hate it more than you hate it\" circle jerk.\n\nWait, I think I'm a little late, aren't I supposed to be writing this in the \"why does the internet go out of its way to hate on Nickleback?\" ELI5 thread...",
"It's interesting that you submitted this to Explain Like I'm Five, because this question can be answered very simply and slightly ironically.\n\nComic Sans is hated because it looks stupid and is meant for children under the age of 5.",
"I feel that the hatred is rather unjustified... I mean I would never type a college essay or resume in Comic Sans but I think it's perfectly appropriate for news / bulletin boards...",
"They're jealous because [Comic Sans is the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.] (_URL_5_)",
"Great question! There is actually a huge body of knowledge on this exact subject, particularly Paul Wal's writings.\n\nIt boils down to innate impulses in our communal survival strategy as a species. We humans are societal animals, and our propagation is largely thanks to this characteristic. There is safety in numbers; acting as a cohesive single unit makes for a powerful macro-organism that can dominate individual competitors and predators. \n\nTo maintain this single-mindedness we must outcast any individual that contradicts the hive. They must not be allowed to procreate (losers, douchebags) or even eat (hobos). Sometimes there are competing mob mentalities, and a battle of mass consciouses occurs in the ether of human interaction.\n\nFor instance, one fork of the human conscious likes to scribe certain glyphs in a specific manner. Another mentality, competing for dominance over the human macro-organism, has recognized these glyphs as part of a behavior pattern manifested by a 'tainted' or weak thought process. \n\nAnyone displaying any signs of thinking differently from you should be shamed, prevented from sharing in community feasts, and most importantly blocked from procreating. Also, fuck as many girls as possible to maximize the spread of your seed, kill infantile males not of your bloodline, and to hell with anyone who uses comic fucking sans.\n\nI hope this helps! PM me if you have any questions.",
"I hate it because it's used inappropriately a lot of the time. Also, it was intended to be a comic book-style font, but it's probably the worst font you could use for comic lettering.",
"It's not so much a hate for the font, but it's excessive overuse. Seldom is the font used in a manner in which it's design was intended.",
"A friend and fellow Redditor [wrote an extensive research paper on why people don't like comic sans](_URL_6_). But no 5 year old will understand it.",
"This thread reminds me of the time I was up way to late and a documentary on Helvetica came on...and it was actually really good.",
"It is the first \"unique\" and \"fun\" font in the font drop down menu, which may further explain its overuse.",
"I asked this here once, everyone got rather annoyed at me.\nThe Karma Gods bless you, Stevieo68.",
"This ELI5 question has been asked ***fifteen times*** already! Three times in the last month!",
"You might also want to see past [/r/ELI5](/r/ELI5) questions RE: Comic Sans: _URL_7_",
"[It's the comedy equivalent of Muzak and I despise it](_URL_8_)",
"It looks like a 5 year old wrote it.",
"If you have to ask, you're streets behind."
] |
How a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) works. | [
"Have you ever ridden a bicycle with multiple front and rear gears? The difference between the size of the gears, or ratio, helps balance how much work you do with how fast you go.\n\nOn a 10-speed bike, you have only 2 gears in the front and 5 in the back with a chain connecting them. With a CVT, you have two cones with a belt between them. By moving the cones in and out you can achieve *any* gear ratio, rather than just a handful discrete gears give you. As an added bonus there's never a point where you stop delivering power because of shifting - it's always moving.\n\nThe specifics of how they move & how the belt stays in place start getting more complicated quickly.",
"There are **many** designs, but they all pretty much do the same thing, so let's look at just one particular example. Though honestly not my absolute favorite, I think [this image](_URL_0_) will be good for the example.\n\nBut first, let's start with a non-continuous transmission. Such transmissions have sets of gears of different sizes. Because there are a finite number of gears, when you want to change between them there is a gear ratio gap, like a gap between 1/3 and 2/3. In these transmissions you wouldn't be allowed to have a radio of 1.5/3, for example.\n\nNow back to the above image. A gear ratio depends on the relative sizes of the 2 gears that are touching. In the image, rather than gears, we see 2 cones and a belt. Suppose that the belt were at the far end of the cones. At that end, every one turn of the right cone would not turn the left cone very much, maybe 1/3 of the way. If the belt were at the nearest end of the cones, the opposite would be true; a single turn of the right cone would rotate the left cone by about 3 full turns. But you can put the belt anywhere in between the end points and get a ratio between 3 and 1/3.\n\nThat is the basis of pretty much all continuously variable transmissions. I can also try to help explain a particular one if the above wasn't enough."
] |
What causes "asparagus pee" and how does it happen so fast after eating it? | [
"Short answer is that asparagus contains a natural chemical aptly named asparagusic acid. This acid is broken down by the body into sulfur-containing compounds. Those sulfur compounds smell. This is the same reason rotten eggs smell. And once made, the breakdown products end up in your urine. Because they are highly volatile, they make it into the air as you pee, and float on up your nose!\n\nI don't know exactly why it shows up so quickly, but my best guess is just that the smelly compounds are made from asparagusic acid very quickly, as soon as you begin digesting the asparagus. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nNot an asparagus expert, nor a pee expert. Just googled your question and found a good article.",
"When your digestive system breaks down mercaptan (a compound in asparagus), by-products are released that cause the strange smell. The process is so quick that your urine can develop the distinctive smell within 15 to 30 minutes of eating asparagus. Not everyone suffers this effect; your genetic makeup may determine whether your urine has the odor -- or whether you can actually smell it. \n\nSome people can't even smell the odor in asparagus urine!",
"**What causes it?**\n\n*Enzymes*\n\nThere's an inheritable gene that some people have that includes a specific enzyme that can break down the acid in asparagus (C4H6O2S2). This acid, when broken down, smells.\n\nThere is nothing wrong in \"asparagus pee\", as it's not toxic. It simply is unpleasant.\n\nWhen you have the right gene passed on to you, you can either produce or smell this \"Asparagusic acid\". If not: You simply lack a gene modification. Nothing to worry about.\n\n**Why does it happen so fast**?\n\nAgain, Enzymes. They are pretty quick in breaking down the compounds found in asparagus and therefore it smells instantly.",
"There are something like 500 genes that contribute to the ability to smell that \"asparagus pee\" smell. Only roughly 50% of people have the necessary genes for it, meaning only about half of all people can smell it. There is some debate to this; some scientists think certain people don't produce the smell itself, however I can say from personal experience that I always smell it, while my wife never smells it, regardless of who is the pee-er.\n\nThe cause of the distinct smell is sulfur, as the byproduct of the digestion of asparagus is a bunch of sulfur-based chemicals. The chemicals are volatile, which means they have a low vapor point where they can get into the air and therefore be detected by human noses. While they are locked in the asparagus, they are not volatile and so we don't smell them.",
"Fun Fact: There are two things at play here, the ability of the body to *produce* the pee smell (one gene) and then there is the ability to *smell* the pee smell, which is a different gene. So you could be producing the smell and not know it, you can also be able to smell it in other's pee, yet not produce it yourself.",
"I have the same question about Golden Crisp and/or Honey Smacks cereal. Urine smells like the cereal rather quickly after eating.",
"Do you know if you can smell asparagus pee, you are one of the few that have the ability. Just like some people are born with more cones and rods in there eyes that give them super color vision, you have a much stranger superpower of smelling asparagus pee that affects 1/3 of the population.",
"Along with the other answers in this thread, vitamin B can also cause rank piss. If you were to take a supplement of B 6, B 12, and others, your urine will gain color even if it is diluted through heavy ingestion of water and will also smell like piss. This is why many people use it to prevent a urine sample being denied during a drug screen. If your vegetable contains a high amount of vitamin B (I believe asparagus, broccoli, and other firm, green veggies do) then prepare for your piss to smell worse than R Kelly's sheets and Trump's comb-over combined.",
"Depending on who you ask, it's either aspagusic acid, or methenitheol. Most now believe that pretty much everyone is a smelly \"excreter\" but only 25-33% of the population has the gene that allows them to \"detect\" smelly pee. \n \nSource: Alton Brown is my hero, also Google :-)",
"What about Sugar Smacks cereal? Those always make your pee smell funny as well.",
"More interesting to me, what causes \"Sugar Puffs pee\"?",
"also wanted to add, it makes EVERYONES urine smell. Some people just lack the necessary olfactory senses to smell it. Just in case someone drops that oh well it doesn't make my pee smell non sense.",
"The real question is why does the breakfast cereal \"Smacks\" smell like pee?"
] |
When someone is given the death penalty, why are they on death row for so long? | [
"There's an appeals process that has to be followed, and that can take years because the courts are really very busy. Then there's the fact that issuing stays of execution is a very easy, low-cost way for governors to earn brownie points with more liberal constituencies who understand how many innocent men have danced the sisal two-step because the State was in a rush to punish someone.",
"As NarnBatSquad and HappyShrapnel said, it all comes down to resources, legal avenues of appeal, and the long, long list of people that are already there.\n\nMany that are on 'death row' are actually awaiting a new trial or hearing; one of the West Memphis Three was on the Last Mile for 18 years, fighting for a new hearing, because his initial conviction was pretty much a show trial.\n\nIncidentally, while the 'last meal' for a death row inmate is simply a custom, and not a requirement or obligation, most prisons have stopped following the tradition because inmates regularly abuse the 'last meal' custom by ordering huge amounts of food that they can't possibly finish.",
"There's a line for appeals, they have the right to challenge the ruling and exhaust their options.\nThen it comes down to the state and its resources; timing the executions.\nIt can take a very long time to do all of this, years and years.",
"The death penalty is not something you can undo, so the legal system ensures that everything about the trial was done fairly and correctly before going ahead with the execution. Every death sentence has to be reviewed several times, and then the prisoner can appeal on a number of different grounds. All of this takes a considerable amount of time.",
"The appeals process is the longest part, but currently there is a backlpg in several states because the drugs used in lethal injections are primarily manufactured in Europe. The EU declines to export them for that purpose, based upon their opposition to the death penalty, and some states do not have a legal alternative means."
] |
Why do some injuries hurt when partially submerged and then feel better fully submerged in water? | [
"If the injury is to a weight-bearing part of your body, the extra weightlessness of being in water can relieve it.\n\nIt’s also why older people do a lot of exercise in pools, it’s less impact on your body"
] |
Why is mental illness still taboo? | [
"I think there are many factors that go into why mental illness is treated as a taboo. \n\nMedia portrayal is probably the biggest problem. In the past, those of us with mental illnesses are shown as psychopaths bent on murder or torture. If that's not the case, we are simply insane folks that can't care for ourselves and usually don't make a lot of sense when you try to talk to us. Because of this, folks who have a mental illnesses are less likely to talk about it because the media makes us feel as though we are wrong. It's kind of the same as being gay. The general population thought it was odd until people actually started coming out...now it's not as odd. \n\nI think another factor is just how diverse mental illness is. You've named a few, but there are a TON more and they effect everyone differently. Sure, my mom could have breast cancer and I'm sure I could quickly find someone else that has gone through the same thing she did. But mental illness is a little harder. I could find someone with depression, by my experience could be far different than theirs. \n\nI think it's hard for folks to understand mental illness because you have to have a mental illness to understand it. I remember when Robin Williams died and I saw a lot of my Christian friends debating whether he died of his depression or if he just killed himself. They think depression is just how they felt when they were sad that one time...but that's absolutely not what it is. I can describe how it feels to get a tattoo and usually folks can identify with the feeling (a sunburn or being scraped with a safety pin). My depression is harder for them to understand because it's such an extreme that they probably have never felt. I usually tell folks that my depressive episodes are about 5 times worse than when I'm legitimately sad about something. That's a great quantitative statement, but they can't experience the feeling. \n\ntl:dr: Media portrays mental illness as psychos. Variety of mental illnesses. Hard to understand mental illness if one cannot experience it.",
"four things come to mind for me (mere speculation at best though) \n\n\n1. Out of sight out of mind \n2. Religious thought on free will\n3. Cultural norms vs Deviancy \n4. Agency Attribution\n\n\n* I think it's mostly because Mental illness is not seen as a physical/biological problem. This is a massive discussion among biologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists. Also the interplay between placebo and nocebo effects are hard to quantify. Some neurologists and biologists will say yes this is a physical problem that medicine can cure and it will work. At the same time a patient with identical symptoms who starts meditation can be just as successful. again the interplay between the mind and brain is hard to observe or measure. \n \n\n* In America There's also this idea of choice and \"free will\" mainly promoted by Judeo Christian theology, where we are the sole thinker of our own thoughts and because of that are solely responsible for everything in our mind, this is why thought crime exists in the Bible, IE thinking about sinning is a sin. In other words \n\n\"are you sad?\"\n\"yes\"\n\"Ok, well stop being sad\"\n\n\"are you lusting?\"\n\"yes\"\n\"Ok, well stop lusting\"\n\n* the diagnosis of mental illness is arbitrary when not linked to biology, \nthe book \"Perv, the sexual deviant in all of us\" mentions this periodically. a nymphomaniac now is completely different from a nymphomaniac one hundred years ago. There are some stories from the US as recent as the 1920's where mothers would seek legitimate and well respected doctors to perform \"female circumcision\" for masturbation. History of sexuality is a great place to observe, mental illness turn to common place and vice versa. The age of consent is a perfect example, \"If you where to take all of the ages of consent imposed by Government around the world you might think you where looking at a random assortment of numbers from 12 to 21\" in one country you could be a mentally ill freak and in another you could be john smith. \n\n* Agency attribution is the human tendency to see another human and say \"well we look similar so we must think/function similarly as well.\" For example if it's easy for me to get down to problem solving, I might assume this is true of others and think it's ridiculous or annoying someone isn't keeping up, or seeks help.",
"Like 500 years ago physical illness was generally seen as caused by sin or personal weakness or some sort of personal failing. In general we are still at that point when it comes to most mental illnesses."
] |
how many more satellites can we launch into space before we run out of room and are there any viable methods for clearing out space to fit more? | [
"Others here are right, space is infinite.\n\nExcept that there's only one geostationary orbit, and there's only room for ~3600 active satellites there (the current closest two satellites there are 1/10th of a degree apart), otherwise their radios might interfere with each other.",
"One complication the answers so far have missed: The Kessler Syndrome.\n\nAs we launch more and more satellites into Low Earth Orbit, we also launch more and more misc debris with those satellites.\n\nThis debris is mostly all tracked, and results in a panicky maneuver on the ISS every few months to avoid a collision.\n\nHowever, at some point there will be too much debris to avoid, and hyper velocity impacts with satellites will start occurring with some frequency. Those impacts, in turn, produce even more debris, etc, etc, etc.\n\n_URL_0_",
"If I'm not mistaken, it's kind of a self-correcting problem. Satellites are in a very low orbit, so they tend to fall out and burn up in the atmosphere after their useful life is over. In fact, i think it's part of the design"
] |
Why is 1 meter 1 meter? | [
"There have been a few basis for the definition of the meter. One of the earlier methods was tying the definition as a fraction of the lenght of the line between the north pole, passing through Paris, to the equator. \n\nAnother method that came about was the lenght of a \"prototype meter\", a physical artifact that represented the lenght of a meter\n\nThen we tied it to the wavelength of the radiation from a specific isotope of Krypton, and then later we defined the meter as a fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum.",
"The meter was originally the distance market on a Platinum-Iridium bar, but then was re-defined in terms of the speed of light for a more fundamental definition. The meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in 1/299,792,458 seconds; it's that precise number because we didn't want to re-work the original meter, and based on a the constant 'c'.",
"A meter equals a meter because of the Law of Identity, the first of the three classical laws of thought. Those laws are as follows:\n\n1) Whatever is, is.\n\n2) Nothing can both be and not be.\n\n3) Everything must either be or not be.\n\nAnyway, the meter is the length it is because it was defined to be so. Originally it was considered to be one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the equator along a meridian through Paris, at least as best they could determine. In a practical sense it was defined by the length of a particular iron bar kept in Paris.",
"I'm not sure if it's true or if it's one of those stories you tell kids, but I was told that a bunch of french scientists went and measured (I think this is the bit they were lying about) the distance between the equator and the North Pole, then cut it into... some significant fraction, Google says it's 1/10'000'000 and saved that on an iron bar which is now in a vault somewhere.",
"In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wren's suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, known as a 'seconds pendulum'. Christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm."
] |
how the University of Phoenix works. | [
"My friend's cousin who I met a couple times was doing an MBA at the University of Phoenix. She didn't think her grades were reflective of her effort; she would work hard and be surprised by how low the mark was, and sometimes hand in crap and be surprised by how high the mark was. Then she handed in a blank paper and got 80%. I really hope this was just one a-hole lazy prof teaching one class and the place in general is not like that.",
"The requirement to enroll is a high school diploma or a GED. \n\nTuition is generally paid for by government loans.\n\nThe professors may be overworked and almost all are part time. \n\nThey have one of the poorest graduation rates of all colleges in the country.\n\nThey take in more Financial Aid than any other college in the country. \n\nTo editorialize: They let anybody enroll. These students are taught by those that may be unqualified, overworked or poorly supervised. Education and graduation are viewed as less important than collecting tuition. Most students leave with debt but no degree. Those that get a degree often find their degrees to be worthless and of limited help in finding a job.\n\nBut, there's no upfront cost since tuition can be paid for with loans. They don't sell the steak, they sell the sizzle. \n\nFor its benefits; if you're in a position where a degree from anywhere can help, it can be a fine place to get a degree. If you need a random degree for advancement, in the military for example, then there's less of a reason to not go there. There are still plenty of reasons to go to a real school, just less of them.",
"My ex used to use them quite a bit in training for her job. She would enroll in various classes, all paid for by her department (police department, she was a crime scene investigator). Classes would only be a week or so long, it was just basically very specialized training in very specialized areas (photography, firearms markings/analysis, things like that). Classes were small, and entirely online, and required specialized credentials to get in to (she had to provide her department ID# as well as some other proof that she was, in fact, in law enforcement). I always assumed that this is where the majority of their money comes in from."
] |
Force Touch on the new iPhone and other phones that have it. What are the real benefits or features? | [
"Force Touch on the MacBooks acts like a right click. 3D Touch on the new iPhones adds a 3^rd option, users can now tap, tap+hold, and deep press. So for app icons, a deep press will bring up shortcuts; so for camera, instead of opening the app and switching to video, you just deep press the icon and slide your finger down to video record, it saves nanoseconds, but those add up. I am waiting to see what in-app functions it can utilize."
] |
how do Dan Aykroyd and Eddy Murphy make Mortimer and Randolph go broke at the end of Trading Places.. how did they get rich? | [
"Short selling.\n\nAt the beginning of the trading day, the Dukes have a fake, unreleased forecast report saying that there will be a shortage of oranges, and therefore the price of frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) will go up.\n\nThe Dukes' goal is to buy as much FCOJ as they can before the report is released and take advantage of the price increase.\n\nLewis instead waits for the price to go way high and then starts *selling* FCOJ he doesn't even own. Basically, he's borrowing shares and promising to buy them back later.\n\nThe real crop report comes out, saying there is no shortage of oranges. The price of FCOJ tanks, and Lewis finishes his short sale by buying back the shares he has to own to cover his earlier sale.\n\nLewis sold high and bought low, in that order. The Dukes bought high, much more than they could actually afford, and what they own now is worthless, so they can't pay back the exchange (the \"margin call\"). This bankrupts them.\n\n_URL_0_"
] |
Are Black LED's a thing, and if so how do they work? | [
"No - there is no light source capable of producing \"black light\" as black is defined as the absence of light."
] |
Why is quantum physics so often mentioned in philosophy and so-called "enlightenment" texts? | [
"One of the main points of overlap between philosophy and quantum physics concerns whether or not there is true randomness-not just events that are beyond our current predictive ability but things that just truly cannot be pinned down or explained beyond \"random.\" \n\nIf those truly random events exist, that's (potentially) a huge blow to a strict determinist worldview and a big boost to those who believe in freewill.\n\nSimilarly, there's another big overlap on the macro end of the physics spectrum and philosophy too. Determining the mass of the universe and whether it's continuously expanding or if it will expand and then begin to contract again has huge implications for physicists as well as philosophers",
"Because quantum mechanics is so counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp, even by the greatest scientific minds on the planet, spurious snake-oil salesmen have hooked onto the terminology and pretend there is some profound connection with the bunkum they are propounding to a gullible audience. Even the cosmetics industry, whose general product consists of an oil and water emulsion with dye and smells added, have got 'quantum' this and that. Quantum means discrete quantities. 'Quantum Mechanics' kind of works in jerks. As a thing reaches a certain amount, it can be increased no further...... until it becomes something else entirely. It's not gradual, but incremental, if you like . That's rather over simplified, but it's as good an analogy as needed for this discussion. 'Quantum Mechanics' is the scientific principles which underpin so much of our modern world. Even telephone cabling must be kept in a tangled mess SPECIFICALLY to stop certain corruption taking place in digital signalling by quantum effects. One thing it is NOT, is philosophy !",
"Quantum physics has, for about 100 years, been the dominant theory in physics about how the world works at extremely small scales. Tons and tons and tons of data supports it, but a lot of its conclusions really defy our intuitive understanding of how the world works and often don't mesh well with other theories of how the physical world works (e.g. relativity). \n\nIf you're in the business of positing arguments about the nature of reality (e.g. if you're a philosopher) quantum physics and its conclusions present a lot of unique arguments and observations.",
"Quantum physics has the dubious distinction of being very real and important science *and* very hard to understand. This makes it both prone to misunderstandings and (partially as a result) great to spin into woo-woo mythology bullcrap while sounding like you have legitimate science to back you up. \n\nNow, that's not to say that quantum physics *doesn't* pose interesting philosophical questions. Just that, by and large, you're going to need to go all buyer-beware on that business."
] |
the concept of financial aid and student loans for university students? | [
"Or do you want the rationale? Here, you'd have to go into an explanation of progressivism in politics. The general idea behind subsidizing education like this seems to be that in the long run-- not in individual cases, but in a much longer time frame-- this will make the country stronger, more economically productive, and will increase material and cultural wealth for everyone."
] |
Why is it so much easier for the brain to be depressed than positive? | [
"It is personal, not everyone is that way. Those of us who are just have to learn to live with it (with or without medical assistance as necessary).\n\nThe ELI5 story is that your brain handles certain chemicals that work in the brain in ways that prevent you from feeling 'normal'"
] |
What is RedPill and BluePill philosophy and what's their main differences? (No bias please) | [
"In the movie \"The Matrix\" the protagonist is offered two pills. If he takes the red pill he will wake up from the computer simulation he has unknowingly been living in while if he takes the blue pill he will forget he was ever told it was a simulation.\n\nSo, a group of people take the red pill as symbol for their ideology. They say they believe that men should be masculine; brave, loyal, assertive and that society is putting women first at the expense of men. They believe that women want \"Alpha males\" and if you are not one then women will leave you and cheat on you.\n\nThe blue pill is in opposition to this, they believe that the red pill is just people being dicks to women. They say that RP encourages using tactics like \"negging\", insulting women to keep them feeling worthless and so she feels like she couldn't do better than the man she is with. They have also found examples of Red Pillers calling women inferior to men."
] |
Why does rock music and classical music fit together so well? | [
"All western music is based on the same music theory of melodies and harmonies created from the major and minor scales and the different modes of them. But rock, (especially metal) has closer ties with classical than, say, R & B because some of the more unusual modes and scales are shared by both. Rock guitarists learn a lot of classical scales in their early years and so they natural influence the songs they write later on."
] |
Why are we taller than our ancestors? | [
"Better nutrition is a good start. Compare the average height in South Korea (5'8 1/2\") with the average height in North Korea (5'5\").\n\nAnd that's after just half a century of malnutrition.\n\nNot sure about the rest, but the importance if better nutrition cannot be overstated here.\n\nI can imagine there's been some evolutionary selection in mates favoring taller, stronger, healthier-looking people, as well, but that depends on how far back you go to define \"ancestors.\"",
"Better nutrition and less time spent fighting infections and diseases, which hinder growth. We now have vaccines, antibiotics, pest control, reduced endemic diseases, parasites control, so on.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's a combination of environmental factors (the things around us, like improved nutrition and shelter) and genetic factors, driven mostly by natural selection and genetic drift (people with advantageous genes reproduce so those genes become more common).\n\nOver time, taller people had an advantage over shorter people, they had improved chances of surviving and reproducing and so over time, people on average became taller."
] |
How does flea medication for pets work? | [
"Almost all modern flea meds are insect neurotoxins that effect receptors that mammals do not have. \n\nIt depends on the treatment but imidacloprid (Advantage), indoxacarb (Activyl) and Fipronil (Frontline, pet Armor, others) are dispersed over the body by natural skin oils and muscle movements. This can take 24-48 hours to happen completely. This is also why you should not bathe your animal with detergent soap during the month. The medications ARE NOT systemically absorbed. This is why there are over the counter. \n\nSelemectin (Revolution) is systemically absorbed and works from that direction\n\nThe orals are obviously systemic (capstar, Bravecto, Nexguard, Comfortis/trifexis)\n\nSentinal/Program (leufenuron) is systemic, but acts very differently. These are insect growth regulators and prevent chitenization. This keeps early life stages of the flea from developing. Think \"birth control\" for fleas. It does not kill the adult flea. \n\nSource: Veterinarian 12 years Veterinary industry 23",
"The shoulder blade spot-on treatments are absorbed through the skin, go into the blood, and are then ingested by the adult fleas when they bite the animal. The best flea treatments generally have two active ingredients. There is the \"adulticide\" (e.g., permethrin) which kills the biting adults, and also an insect growth regular (e.g. pyriproxyfen) that suppresses eggs/larvae/pupae. I believe some preparations are meant to be applied to the whole fur, and have a local killing effect.\nI have no authority on this matter"
] |
Photography, Exposure and such | [
"OH OH I CAN PLAY THIS ONE! (I am actually really excited about this, haha.)\n\nBack in the days of film photography, the way film and photo paper work is by exposing light-sensitive chemicals (separately on film or on paper) to light. Here, I'll refer to film, which is a plastic strip coated with those chemicals. When lots of light shines onto the film, those spots become dark. When a little light shines onto it, it doesn't get as dark. The different levels of darkness create a negative image (which means all the light and dark is reversed from what you usually see). You get the positive image by shining more light through the film (after you put it through another chemical process to reveal and then fix the image to the film) and onto light-sensitive paper, usually from a distance of a few inches to a few feet to create an enlarged image with all the light-and-dark the way it should be.\n\nThere are two ways you can expose light to the film in a camera. One is by the opening in the lens which is called the aperture. If you make it bigger, more light gets in. If you make it smaller, less light gets in. Ever made a pinhole in a piece of paper and looked through it to see that things far away are more focused? A lens works like that, too. A big lens opening tends to be more blurry except for the part you're focusing on. A small lens opening is focused through the whole image. The size of the opening is referred to as the f-stop. So, if you see something like f/8, that's talking about the size of the aperture. f/8 is considered \"normal\" in that it sees as the human eye sees in terms of focus. \n\nThe other way you can control the amount of light is the shutter speed. The shutter is a light-proof door that blocks the film from light until you want to take a picture. A short shutter speed will let in only a little bit of light. A long shutter speed will let in more light. These are measured in fractions of a second. So, a shutter speed of 1/60 is 1/60th of a second. \n\nAnother important variable is film speed, which just means the size of the silver in the film. The most important part of film or photo paper is silver, which reacts to light thanks to the other chemicals involved. Bigger particles of silver take less light to make an image, making them good for low-light situations like indoors at dim restaurants. Smaller particles of silver need more light. Ever seen photographs that look \"grainy\"? This is because you're seeing the silver particles! \"Faster\" film, measured in small numbers like 100, 200, or 400, has little to no grain because the silver pieces are so tiny, but they require lots of light to make the image. \"Slower\" film, numbers like 1600, 3200, need less light to make the picture but then you can also see the silver pieces. It can be a cool effect, but some people don't like it. This is just a matter of taste. But then, so is the rest of photography, just like any other art form!\n\nNow, most photography has transitioned to digital (sadly, for old-school folks like me). However, not much has changed in the way it all works. Instead of film and film paper, there's a computer chip that reads all the settings. The outcome is generally the same, though digital photographs can be changed and altered more than traditional film-and-paper since you're not limited by what the film or the paper can do. \n\nAny questions? I'm happy to clarify anything further if you like!"
] |
What gives the federal government the right to ban marijuana? And why can states violate that? [Serious] | [
"The Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate items that have a high probability of being trafficked across state borders. \n\nStates that have chosen to legalize marijuana are simply choosing not to enforce federal marijuana laws and have gotten rid of most of their own criminal & civil penalties on the sale and trafficking of the drug. If the federal government wants to enforce those laws they now must carry out enforcement itself. \n\nProhibition was put through as a Constitutional Amendment because proponents felt it would be a more permanent change than a simple law that could easily be overturned. Remember when Prohibition passed no Amendment had ever been overturned at that point.",
"The way I see it, when a state goes against a federal law it means the people of the state are actively trying to veto the law, but can only do so on a state level. \n\nThere needs to be a bigger and clearer distinction of what the federal powers are and what the state power are. Too much damn ambiguity in our government",
"As an outsider not really familiar with US laws, do I get it right from the explanations, that in simple terms the local police won't enforce the federal law (are they sworn to uphold only state law?), but if the F.B.I comes knocking, they can arrest/convict you?\nAre there any \"big\" laws like this one, where the difference in federal and state law is treated \"lighlty\"?"
] |
Why did Britain and France declared war on Germany over the invasion of Poland, but not the USSR? | [
"Although the English and French were not on the best terms with the Soviet Union, the Soviets had not been acting aggressively for the last few years, unlike the Germans. Before the Polish invasion, the Germans broke the Treaty of Versailles, militarized the Rhineland, annexed Austria, invade the Sudetenland (a German part of Czechoslovakia), and then the rest of Czechoslovakia. The British and French had a valid cause to declare war on Germany for each of these transgressions, but they didn't. The final act that finally pushed the world into war was the German invasion of Poland. The Soviet invasion of western Poland was their first act. The English and French had to no agreement to protect Poland from the Soviet Union, nor did they warn the Soviet Union against expansion, nor was the Soviet Union bound by treat not to take up arms.\n\nAlso, fighting a war against Germany made geographic sense, but not a war against the Soviet Union. The soldiers could attack Germany from France with support from across the English channel. However, attacking the Soviet Union would first require going through German, then through Poland, and into the heart of Russia. The English and French did not want to go to war at all, so spreading themselves across Europe was not going to happen. In fact, the English and French did do anything during the Polish invasion, which showed how unwilling they were to fight at that point in time.",
"They were already at war with Germany when Germany invaded the USSR.\n\nIf you were asking why the USSR didn't declare war on Germany, then it's because of the [Molotov-Ribbentrop pact](_URL_0_). The Germans violated that pact when they invaded the USSR in 1941.",
"Why would they? \n\nThey viewed Hitler as a threat, and Germany likely to repeat the sins of WW1 if left unchecked. They tried appeasement at Munich and it failed. France had a treaty with Poland, and the UK agreed it was necessary to stop Germany. They declared war on Germany while recognizing they likely couldn't do much right away (although if France had attacked Germany immediately, it would have helped things). But they weren't worried about a war with the Soviets. And didn't want to start one. \n\nWhen the USSR invaded from the east, \"the Soviet government announced it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state – according to Soviet propaganda – had collapsed in the face of the Nazi German attack and could no longer guarantee the security of its own citizens.\" \n\nThe French and British were dismayed about that, but had a big war with Germany ahead of them. It wouldn't have made any sense to declare war on the USSR; they didn't touch the USSR and couldn't reach them anyway (Germany was in the way). \n\nit was basically \"let's not do something profoundly stupid and create more problems.\"",
"That would be one way to guarantee that the Soviet Union would be an ally of Germany. As it were, the German-Soviet cooperation proved short-lived. So it was a strategic decision as the Allies were not ready to absorb the millions of casualties it would take to bring down Germany. \n\nAlso, the Allies didn't have any territory to attack the Soviet Union from. They sort of tried during the 1939-1940 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. The Allies requested that Sweden and Norway allow transit of a military force to Finland, but they said no (the Allies did have an ulterior motive: the occupation of the Swedish iron ore fields)."
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.