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Why isn't a vacuum created in my body when I fart? | [
"Vacuums would only be created with rigid bodies.\n\nWhen you fart it's more like popping bubble wrap; Your stomach compresses rather than having a vacuum.",
"Fart happens due to the build up of gases by bacteria in your stomach. More gas, means more pressure. When you fart, you are relaxing your spinchter muscles in your anus. Thus, the pressure equalizes. When you are holding in a fart, it becomes unsettling due to the pressure. Of course, how would you know if a fart is creating a vaccum? If it did, it would only be momentary before the pressure equalizes."
] |
Why does water taste weird in the morning compared to at night? | [
"You'll have to be more specific, water sitting on your counter or stagnant in the pipes will be warmer and have more oxygen or minerals dissolved in it making it taste different.\n\nOther wise factors like brushing your teeth, or having a lot of build up of bacteria in your mouth while you sleep can affect the taste as well."
] |
Why is there a rise of radical conservative officials in public office around the world right now (e.g. USA, Brazil, South Korea, Britain, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.)? | [
"Billy runs a lemonade stand in a middle-class suburb neighborhood. He gets his supply of lemons from Jimmy, whose dad runs a lemon picking company and Jimmy gets a cut of whatever profits Billy makes.\n\nThe neighborhood is made up of people much like Billy. They also tend to all look like Billy in terms of skin color. However, one day, a new group of kids come and set up their own lemonade stand in the neighborhood while charging cheaper prices! Billy notices these kids look quite dark, dirty, and \"urban\"... they must be from the lower income districts in the city!\n\nSoon, Billy loses more and more sales due to the competition. Everything was much better before those \"urban\" kids came into the neighborhood! If only there was some way to get rid of them!\n\nSally overhears Billy's frustrations and decides to run for a position that gives her power over who controls the lemonade sales in the area. She mentions how back in the day, when the \"urban\" kids were not there, things were great. Billy loves this message and gets all his friends to vote for Sally.\n\nSally wins the position. And the very next day, Billy gets replaced with a vending machine. \n\nIt turns out Jimmy, the controller of lemons, actually made it easier for all the inner city kids to come in the neighborhood and sell their cheaper products. Jimmy gets a cut no matter what so it doesn't matter who sells. He actually was making more money since labor was much cheaper. Jimmy was working with Sally for her to win so he can put in the vending machines that he was working on. Then, he can control all the profits.\n\nEDIT: A bit more real world context: After World War II, technology has made our world more connected than ever before with new methods of transportation (planes) and communication (TV, internet). Companies always want to take advantage of any technology that can give them more money. So they opened up trade restrictions and lobbied for lowered taxes. This was good for the company (more money) and the country (company in the country has more money) but bad for the people (your worth is the same as someone in a poorer country).\n\nNowadays, the biggest companies are global corporations. They run in multiple countries so it doesn't matter if the country benefits as long as they get money. Therefore, they can shuffle their profits to countries where they pay little tax while other countries never see any of the returns from their investments (infrastructure and education).\n\nPeople are realizing that there was a turning point when things went wrong. They want things to go back to when they were good again. However, technology doesn't go backwards (unless we go through another dark ages with World War III). Politicians are taking advantage of this frustration by running radical conservative. But they need money to run... and who has money besides the corporations? Obviously, once they get elected... these politicians have to give back somehow...",
"While each of these countries is unique, there are some common threads that run through what's often a pendulum swing through different type of control in countries with free elections. It's rare that one party stays in power for an extended period of time, since being in power opens a party up to criticism based on performance, whereas not being in power means you only have to have better promises. I don't think there's any overt connection between these events, but more a question that people see one thing happening one place, and it energizes them to try it in their location. \n\nA cartoonishly simple example of the swing would be \"to redistribute, or not?\"\n\nSome political groups think it's important and even justified as good public policy to take things by force of law from people who have more, and give them to people who have less. This is popular among people who have less. (Including, e.g. people on reddit, who typically are young and have little.) The theory is this will encourage the people with less to be grateful and to vote for that party.\n\nThis also has the effect of antagonizing the people who have more, since they don't like having their things taken from them, so they work to oppose this when it happens. (It also brings along those who see themselves in the \"have more\" group in the future, or those who don't think it's a good idea to redistribute in the first place.) And so you get political alternatives elected.\n\n(Then, when those people are in office, they do something that makes people wish the other group was back in power, and the cycle continues.)",
"It's simple. 1% of the world population ,who are continually hording the world's wealth at the expense of the rest of the 99%, have been doing such a good job that lately, that the 99% started to take notice and even started a movement (by the same name) across the world, pointing out how more and more people fall into poverty to keep those few nice and warm with all their bags of money. See, those bags of money are awfully nice, and they don't want to have to give them up, so , the 1%, decided to put all their efforts and energies into exploiting one side the 99% against the other (White, low-income class persons vs everyone else) in an attempt to keep the 99% occupied while they continue to exploit them for even more sweet ass bags of money.",
"It's a multitude of reasons. Economic hardships always help prop up right-wing views - leftism is a luxury. Then you have the worldwide failure of [the smug style of American globalist liberalism](_URL_1_), which appeals to a very small circle of people at the top of society, and scoffs at the legitimate concerns of the general population as the unwashed masses of plebs not knowing where their best interest lies. Arguably it started as early as the 2000s in Russia, where the liberals [consistently shoot themselves in the feet](_URL_3_), leaving the population a choice between Vladimir Putin and self-described Nazis. Brazil is a case of a failure of hilariously inept extreme leftism; Hungary (and the rest of Visegrad 4) is unwilling to abandon nationalism in favour of multicultural Europe and [its dubious benefits](_URL_0_); Ukraine is a special case - the far right forces are left over from the World Wars ([which is glaringly obvious](_URL_2_)) and have been imported from the US and Canada.\n\nThe trend has, of course, reached a thundering crescendo with Donald Trump."
] |
How are porcelain brakes, on my car, guaranteed for life? Do they never wear away? How do they not produce brake dust? | [
"Do you mean ceramic? They produce dust still, but it's light colored so it's practically invisible compared to the dust most other pads produce. They definitely still wear out but they have a very long lifetime. The ceramic compound brakes on my 330i have lasted through track days at Laguna Seca, California Speedway, 2 years of autocross, and 3 years of daily driving and they still have life left in them. It's that long life that makes a lifetime guarantee possible. It's a great selling point but will probably be only used very rarely. The typical car will be sold before those pads ever wear out. It's probably *extremely* rare that the guarantee gets used enough to eliminate the profit from the initial purchase.",
"The pads aren't guaranteed to *last* for life, just guaranteed to not have problems, noises or premature wear for life. Some places sell \"lifetime\" pads, you just pay the labor when they wear. Same for \"lifetime\" rotors. Most places only offer discount/cheap pads and rotors on these deals with an upgrade to ceramics, yet still are bottom dollar ceramics. Not necessarily a bad deal, just may not have the performance of better/higher priced parts. And ceramics do produce dust, just not as much. \n \n Source: Sold and installed them for years. \n\n Edit: I know ya meant ceramic.",
"The problem with ceramic brake pads (and be careful - there are ceramic pads and ceramic rotors, two very different creatures) is that they are harder than the steel rotors. This causes the steel rotor material to become the consumable item, rather than the pad itself. That's how they achieve very high life cycles on these product. Is it good? It depends on your expectations and how long you're planning on using your car. For some people it makes sense. If you have a daily driver and are probably going to have to replace the rotors in a few years anyway, perhaps more people should consider ceramic pads. So parts definitely still wear out, it just takes longer and spreads the destruction around to more than just the pad itself. \n\nI also see a few people who appear to be referencing ceramic brakes, like those fitted to high end race cars. These brakes are extremely expensive ($10,000+ option) and probably beyond the scope of what we're talking about here. This design of brake uses silicon carbide or other semi-metallic materials to replace the steel rotors.",
"The guarantee is **not**: \"These brakes will never wear\"\n\nThe guarantee is: \"We will replace these brakes if they wear away\"\n\nThe point for the manufacturer is that for most people, the brakes should last for something like 150,000 miles... a level of mileage that most cars won't hit. So if they have to replace the brakes for 10% of customers in 10 years time, but make 20% profit on the original sale, they're still making a 10% profit (and they get the interest payments on the other 10%, because they keep the money for 10 years). Slightly simplified, but the point is that it still makes more money than they lose",
"guaranteed for the life of the product, when the product no longer has any life the guarantee is no longer in effect and you buy more, simple!",
"It's important to realize how easy and effective it is for companies to offer guarantees. Most people only replace the pads on their car a couple of times before selling it. The odds of giving that new owner the receipt from those ceramic brake pads are quite low. So, if you are a brake manufacturer and you make a brake pad that lasts twice as long as normal brakes, even though there's no way they will last a literal \"lifetime,\" it's very profitable to market them as guaranteed for life: more people will by them for more money and few of them will ever wear them out and still have the receipt to come asking for a replacement. \n\nIn short, ceramic brakes work like any other brake: they cause friction and wear away into dust eventually.",
"Lifetime guarantees are very common on many different auto parts. The guarantee really has nothing to do with the product's materials/features. The product will wear and fail just like any other, however the company is betting that the marketing advantage of offering \"lifetime\" will produce more sales revenue than the cost of claims that will be filed. \n\nThe companies will usually stack the odds in their favor with some combination of a better product (less failures), picking products with average lifespans longer than average car ownership, complicated redemption requirements (like mailing in warranty cards), and limitations (like pro-rated discount instead of replacement).\n\nCompanies will sometimes back the wrong product and take a hit, but for the most part the more expensive premium prices will put them ahead.",
"Because warranties and guarantees are selling points weighed against the predicted cost of honoring them. Because your break pads last longer than you (very probably) keep the same car, and you can't transfer them to a new car, the company is sure that you won't use the guarantee. \n\nIn fact, the company is sure that so few people will ever need to use the guarantee that it's worth paying for the 1/10000 customer who does. That's because the guarantee convinces so many more people to buy the pads that it easily makes up for that one guy and then some.\n\nSo, in short, it's because more people buy the pads for the guarantee and practically nobody ever uses it. Equals profit.",
"Any 'for life' guarantee is for the life of the product.\n\nIf the product has an estimated life time of 10 years, then a 'for life' guarantee is good for 10 years. Basically what you're getting in that guarantee is a repair or replacement if it fails due to manufacturing defect, but it would not cover failure due to expected wear. (or even unexpected wear, if you work the breaks hard and wear it down faster than expected)\n\nSince most products that have lifetime guarantees are of the sort that will fail within a year if there is a manufacturing defect, and will otherwise easily last to or past the 'lifetime' limit, it's a pretty safe guarantee to make.",
"I have worked on my own cars since 1977. I have owned over twenty of them in that time, and purchased many \"guaranteed for life\" parts over the years. I can not remember a single instance where I ever used one of those warranties, because I always got rid of the car before the part wore out. (Yes, I know that comes out to about 1.9 years/car, but some of those I drove for seven years or more.)",
"Mechanic here. Most parts you purchase from a retailer like Autozone come with a lifetime warranty. Most brake pads, ceramic or semi-metallic will last around 60,000 miles. Most people do not keep any vehicle for 60,000 miles. The national average is around 3 years or 36,000 miles on new vehicles."
] |
Why is it hard to speak when we are emotional? | [
"Emotions are caused by chemicals being released in the brain. These chemicals can cause love, panic, fear, nostalgia, etc. When surprising information hits your brain, it can get flooded by these chemicals and can hinder other non essential brain operations.",
"Emotions take up processing power and influence our responses.\n\nAs soon as you start having feelings some portion of your brain is going to be taken up feeling those feelings and thinking about those feelings. This reduces the processing power left for thinking about what you should say/do.\n\nFrom there emotions are not just thoughts, they are \"modes\".\n\nFeeling love? Your going to start craving intimacy and what is more intimate than getting your partner pregnant? No time for condoms, considering whether this is a good idea, thinking about pulling out, your brain is geared to HAVE SEX NOW mode. Though more romantic like.\n\nFeeling angry? Your brain just went into \"KILL THEM\" mode. Violent thoughts, physically readying yourself to fight, lowering inhibitions about being injured or taking risks.\n\nEtc.\n\nObviously these modes are not conducive to logical thinking or speech writing."
] |
elemental particle spin. | [
"> How can a particle have 1/2 a spin? Does it go around half way and then stop? Or is this a speed in that it spins half as fast as a 1 spin?\n\nThe particle isn't actually spinning, there isn't even a clear meaning for this for a point particle. 'Spin' is just a number that it has which affects its behaviour - the number alone doesn't even have units, and so cannot describe an actual rate of spin. We use the word spin because of the way it relates to angular momentum effects.\n\n > Since direction is relative to the observer, how can it be said that a particle is has an up or down spin, left or right spin?\n\nWhen we say this, we aren't implying a reference to any supreme direction, but only to the measurement itself and to later measurements. For instance, 'up' and 'down' have clear meanings in an experiment, and can easily be related to 'left' and 'right'.\n\nIf you measure the particle's spin in a direction, you don't get fractional answers; it either is or it isn't. This is because spin is a quantum property. For instance, if we set a particle's spin to be 'up', then measure it in the horizontal direction 'right', the probability of finding it is in this state is 0.5"
] |
What causes the “burn” in muscles when working out? | [
"When you perform strenuous exercise, the movement of your muscles require more energy than can be provided by aerobic methods which use oxygen from your blood. Your body is then forced to produce energy by anaerobic methods (without oxygen). These processes end up producing a substance called lactic acid which causes your muscles to burn.",
"The short-term pain that you feel while doing something over a short period of time like weightlifting or sprinting is caused by lactic acid. Inside each of your cells, there are mitochondria (yes, the powerhouses of the cell). Mitochondria produce a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate) that provides energy for your cells to do things. ATP is produced by a process called \"cellular respiration\" which involves sugar (glucose) and oxygen. When you work out anaerobically (using up a lot of energy and oxygen in a short amount of time), the mitochondria can't complete the entire cycle of cellular respiration, so they go through \"fermentation\" instead- they produce a small amount of ATP and form the rest of the sugar into lactic acid. The lactic acid is released into your muscle cells and they become painful and fatigued, causing a burning-type sensation.",
"I haven't researched this in any way, so take what i write with a grain of salt. \n\nBasically, when you're working out, you basically slightly rip your muscles, and after resting, the places where it ripped regrow so you end up with more muscle than you started. This is also the reason you shouldn't work out too much and rest properly"
] |
Why is the letter "Y" sometimes a vowel? | [
"Even though we label *letters* as consonants or vowels, it's really only *sounds* that are consonants or vowels. And thanks to English's screwy writing system, \"y\" can be either - at the start of \"you\", it's a consonant, and at the end of \"try\", it represents a vowel (well, a diphthong, so it's sort of two vowels strung together quickly - aah to eee). In the word \"tray\", \"ay\" represents a diphthong, as well, but you can say that the \"y\" is just one vowel of the pair. That's also why \"w\" is sometimes included as a vowel, in words like \"how\", where the \"ow\" is a diphthong that goes from aah to ooo.",
"Because \"vowel\" means the **SOUND** a letter represents.\n\n* Sometimes \"Y\" means a consonant, like \"Yellow\" or \"Yo-yo\" or \"Yes\".\n* Sometimes \"Y\" means a vowel, like how \"Synergy\" is pronounced \"Sin-ner-gee\", or \"Fly\" is pronounced \"Fli\".\n\nTo simplify, a vowel is a sound you can make just with your voice-box. Try pronouncing the \"Y\" parts above with and without moving your lips/tounge, and you'll see how one is easy and the other is hard.",
"A consonant is when your mouth is closed and blocks the air. Normally this is the start or the stop of a syllable.\n\nA vowel is when your mouth is open and the sound continues, normally between other letters.\n\nY works as both because it can be used with the mouth both open and closed. Open, such as \"MY\", the Y sound continues off the M sound and isn't closed. Or it can be a closed mouth sound such as \"YES\", the Y sound is made with the mouth closed and the air blocked, then opened to create the emphasis on the Y \"YUH-esss\"\n\nThe simplest way I've learned to think of the differences between Consonants and Vowels is what shape your mouth is doing when you make them. Consonants will always ether start or stop with the air way blocked (thus making up the start or the end of a syllable). Vowels will generally always be created with the air way open. You can say all the vowels in both contexts without closing your airway once. \"a-e-i-o-u-A-E-I-O-U\". You can't do that with consonants.",
"Simply put, the letter 'Y' has two sounds as in **y**ear and fl**y**. The y in fly makes the 'i' sound which just so happens to be a vowel. Basically, a vowel is a letter in a word that makes you open your mouth and when the y has the 'i' sound, it makes you do just that qualifying it for a vowel. It is not considered a vowel when it has the 'y' sound as in **y**ear or pla**y**er"
] |
What is the deciding factor in whether or not a light wave is absorbed or reflected? | [
"Mostly the electron configuration and whether the light energy is the right frequency to promote an electron in the receiving material.\n\nLight hits electrons, makes them more energetic, and they either do so stably, unstably, or just arent the right match. Arent the right match and they go dtright through, stably and they are absorbed and unstably they reflect.",
"When light photons hits the atoms of the medium, they come with a certain energy depending on their wavelength. And the atoms can only have certain amounts of energy in them, depending on what energy levels are stable configurations. \n\nSo if the energy of the photon is equal to one of the stable higher energy states of the atom then it's absorbed, and the atom gains that energy and goes to higher state, if it's not, it's reflected."
] |
How do people "grow out" of allergic conditions like Asthma? | [
"This is ELI5, so simply put, your body gets used to the allergen that it overreacted to in the first place. The protein/carb/lipid tags on the foreign body are so familiar to your immune system there isn't any reason for it to go into a reaction. In theory most allergies can be \"cured\" this way, but for some reactions the risk isn't worth it. For less severe allergies, this is the basic premise of this aspect of immunotherapy.",
"I have no clue what the answer to this is, but I am almost 23 and my eczema seems to be getting worse as I age, not going away. So unfortunate."
] |
Why does rain make us feel cozy? | [
"Let's be a bit more specific and talk about gentle rains with maybe a bit of thunder in the distance while you're inside or under shelter. There's a big number of things that contribute.\n\nFirst, the *soft white noise*. A gentle rain creates tons of mildly distracting pleasant white noise. This helps reduce stress. \n\nIt *amplifies positive feelings of comfort, shelter and safety*. You don't get these positive feelings when you're outside doing stuff in it, you get them when they're not drenching you. So there's a bigger difference between INSIDE (where you're comfortable) and OUTSIDE (where you wouldn't be), so you notice that you're in a positive state a bit more. And this contrast can be bigger if there's thunder off in the distance somewhere. And such rains comes when it's usually comfortably humid and cool, rather than sticky and too hot. \n\nGentle rains are tied to an emotional state of calmness too because they're *associated with a history of calm activities and \"me time\"*, relaxing and not working. The last time there was a day like this you pampered yourself a little with a good book on a comfortable couch... so you look forward to the next time. \n\nRain *symbolizes renewal and cleanliness*. It's a positive source of growth for plants and it often produces a nice clean smell as it washes dust away. So there's a mental association with a few positives there.\n\nAnd for those of us who live in temperate zones, this type of pleasant rain means it's not snowing and there are leaves on the trees... and so it's what most of us consider to be *the better time of the year*.",
"Less fomo: it's socially acceptable and expected to get cozy when it rains. Guilt free cozying without missing out on the coolest party ever or other socializing because there's a good chance everyone else is just getting cozy too.",
"Way back in cavemen days, rain meant we could rest without fear of being hunted. We could sit in our caves and relax.",
"It depends on where you are. If you're at home, and it's also cold out, you turn on the heat and some lights, grab a sweater or a blanket, and bam, you're feeling cozy. Because those things make you feel warmer. If you're outside, you pull up your hoodie or get under an umbrella, maybe stand close with someone else under that umbrella, and bam, cozy! Imagine being outside in the rain, no coat, no umbrella, no somebody, no warm...no cozy!"
] |
Say I have a bad cold with an impossibly stuffed up nose. No way to breathe through my nostrils. Now say I get kidnapped, and they put duct tape over my mouth. Would my body react to un-stuff my nose so I could breathe to live? | [
"I wouldn't worry about it. Next time you have duct tape (and preferably no facial hair) take a strip and put it over your mouth and try to get it off without your hands. It's absolutely trivial. The whole \"I have duct tape over my mouth so now I can't talk\" thing is just for the movies. Honestly it's one of their sillier gags since anyone with a roll of the gray, shiny stuff can show how implausible it is. \n\nAs for your actual question in a non-duct-tape scenario, I can tell you that in my experience adrenaline has a lovely head-clearing effect. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a normal reaction to extreme fear.",
"I do a lot of kinky play, and I don't know if all bodies are the same, but I absolutely CANNOT have my mouth covered, filled or otherwise occupied while I have a bad cold. I can't even perform oral sex with a cold, (should I want to).\n\nI can imagine in an intense enough scenario adrenaline would reduce inflammation at least some for some amount of time. But I find I also need more oxygen *(breathe more heavily etc)* when my adrenaline's pumping. \n\nBut I've definitely had to stop kinky activities because I could not breathe and it was just not getting any better. I also would not top in such a case, due to my own experience.\n\n*(Honestly, I was just as scared of literally choking on my own snot as I was of suffocation.)*\n\nDuct tape only works if you go all the way around the head several-many times. (Can rip a lot of hair out though, depending on hair type and removal process.) Just a short piece over the mouth you can work off in a matter of seconds. If you want to make it so the person can't talk you need to immobilize the tongue, muffling screams mostly just needs adequate gap-free barriers.",
"Not quickly enough, I don't think. One thing I've found that sometimes helps is to just put a finger on one nostril and collapse it for about 30 seconds. Sometimes that clears it up. Assuming they tied your hands behind your back, you might be able to push your nose against a table leg or something to accomplish this in the ~2 minutes you have before you black out, assuming you got a good breath of air first. You could also try just warning your kidnappers first before they tape you, as if they are going to the trouble of kidnapping they presumably don't want you dead in the immediate term.",
"No. Having experienced this first hand during training I can tell you that your nose does not magically unblock itself. You suffocate and pass out. Hopefully your captors notice and remove the tape or you'll just be another body waiting to be identified.",
"You know when you're almost done with your braces and the orthodontist gives you those long rubber bands to wear at night that you're supposed to fasten all over your mouth to tighten up the gaps but you can't really open your mouth while wearing them? I had a bad cold and couldn't breathe through my nose - totally had a panic attack after I put them on and realised I couldn't breathe. Cut them off with scissors.",
"That depends on why your nasal passage is blocked. If it is swollen turbinates then you will probably sufficate. I say this as someone with horrible allergies who had to have them removed. If I had my mouth duct taped over before the surgery I would have suffocated, after I'm good to go now. So if it's mucus I bet it would be fine, but if it is swollen glands in your nose you're out of luck. So I would say it depends on what is blocking on a given instance. Hopefully explains the conflicting answers.",
"[\"do not gag me, I have a terrible cold\"](_URL_0_) from Infinite Jest. This exact scenario occurs. The victim tears muscles in his abdomen trying to clear even a little bit of one nostril but he eventually expires. Horrific to read.",
"Was racing not long ago and my sinuses were completely blocked. Allergies had done their thing and I was an official member of the mouth breather club. Going through a corner the car got loose unexpectedly and after gathering it up I was still getting the adrenaline rush. Sinuses were immediately clear for the next 15 seconds then closed back up after the rush wore off.\n\nExtremely frustrating that the swollen sinuses can be turned off yet my body just doesn't.\n\n\nI'm not sure what the technical term is. Could have been adreneline or some other system doing it's thing"
] |
Why does Nutella need no refrigeration or microwaving? | [
"It's ingredients do not spoil at room temperature until said expiration date, similarly to peanut butter, and is edible as is; the ingredients have undergone their completed industrial processing and are safe to eat from the jar.",
"Nutella is mostly fat and sugar. In such high concentrations, that it litterally sucks the water out of any bacteria or such that comes in contact. Its called osmosis. Thats why it doesn't spoil easily."
] |
How can the car industry be so diverse, and still be so successful? | [
"For the same reason there can be dozens of fast food companies, dozens of soft drink sellers: there is a huge, huge market with lots of different preferences.",
"The market for cars isn’t that diverse. You have major car brands and then companies that fall under their umbrella. 9 total"
] |
Aussies, what are bogans? | [
"bogans are culturally marginal people. they wear shit clothes and speak in non sensical platitudes. they smoke value pack cigarettes and drink goon. they vote labor for the benefits, and are all about 'straya. they are borne of underage and unmarried parents - and again fall pregnant and create more socially parasitic spawn",
"They are almost an equivalent to the British chav or lad/lass. They seem to have the broadest/thickest and most 'stereotypical' Aussie accent, drink goon and booties (drinking from a boot), make wheelies in their ute, those sorts of shenanigans. Here are some national icons:\n\n[Waiting for a mate guy](_URL_0_)\n\n[Aussie getting arrested](_URL_1_)",
"Effectively like rednecks instead they classically vote for the left instead of the right-leaning, and hilariously wrongly named, Liberal Party. \n\nBogan culture can be best described by what happens in this [video](_URL_2_).",
"[This video](_URL_3_) will explain it perfectly for you, lower socioeconomic australians who generally wouldn't be called classy in any way and are fine with it."
] |
How can you not bleed to death when surgeons cut you open? I mean a papercut can still bleed | [
"They clamp major arteries, and use an IV to put fluids back into your body. For a minor surgery, the fluids are enough to keep your systemic pressure up while your body makes new blood.\n\nFor major surgery, they give you whole blood or plasma, as needed.",
"Cutting through the skin bleeds but the muscles in vessel walls contract to close down the vessels thus stopping bleeding. Any that don't stop can be burnt with localised electricity to stop the bleeding. \n\nOnce inside, you can imagine that there are layers within the body surrounding organs. Layers of fat, fibrous tissue etc. Blood vessels run in these layers. You try to go in between these layers where possible to avoid cutting the blood vessels and minimise bleeding. Again if one is cut it either stops or you can stop it with small electric burns\n\nIf big vessels need to be cut through then you tie an absorbable stitch around them to hold them closed until they shrink and grow closed"
] |
how do we know how old Saturn's rings are if we never been there? | [
"When you say never been there, people's may not have been there but the rings have been analyzed through Hubble, Voyager spacecraft and Cassini space probe. It used to be believed the rings were created like 100 million years ago but ring features seen by instruments on Cassini -- which arrived at Saturn in 2004 -- indicate the rings were not formed by a single cataclysmic event. The ages of the different rings appear to vary significantly, and the ring material is continually being recycled. They think it could be as old as the solar system 4.5 billion years old.\n\nHere is the article:\n_URL_0_"
] |
How you play Dungeons and Dragons? | [
"EDIT: Also, check out /r/rpg for more about RPGs!\n\nThe full rules are actually pretty complicated, so I'll give you a general run down of how D & D and other table-top RPGs are played.\n\nYou need at least 2 players. One is the \"Game Master\" (GM) or \"Dungeon Master\" (DM) - the titles pretty much mean the same. They may also be called the story teller. The GM is responsible for deciding what the setting is, what rules the game will be played by, controlling the actions of Non-Player-Characters (NPCs), and determining the difficulty and outcome of the game's various dice rolls.\n\nEach of the other players controls the actions of one Player Character (PC). They should have a character sheet that lists their PC's name, basic background, and stats. How a PC's stats are described is going to vary a lot depending on what game you're playing, but there's usually at least some numbers involved such as \"Strength: 15\" or \"Stealth: +5\". PCs may also be described in terms of a Class (Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Bard, Monk, Ranger, etc.) and Level (\"I'm a level 10 Paladin!\"). Finally, a PC may have special abilities that are not numerical, but allow them to do something unusual.\n\nExactly how a PC gets their stats is through the process of Character Building or Character Creation. There are set rules for determining your stats, either by rolling dice (roll 3d6, that's your strength, roll another 3d6, that's your intelligence score), or by giving players a certain number of points to spend (again this all depends on exactly what game you're playing) or some other combination of rules.\n\nOnce everyone's characters are made, the GM establishes the basic story (\"You all meet at a Inn. The strange old man in the corner asks you to retrieve his lost amulet from the nearby cave full of goblins\"). The players then respond by describing their actions. If an action is simple or easy, such as talking, then it happens exactly as the player describes. If the action could fail, though, the GM determines a difficulty for the action, and the player rolls a die, adding or subtracting appropriate bonuses and penalties based on their stats. The GM lets the player know if their roll was a success or not, consequences are adjudicated, and the player and GM work together to narrate the results.\n\nStories can be anything the GM and players want. Some groups like to focus on hack-and-slash adventure, killing monsters and taking their stuff. Others like mysteries, complex social interactions, or simply exploring an imaginary world together. There are also published stories called \"modules\" that give the GM a pre-made set of characters and circumstances to run for the Players."
] |
how did clocks and time pieces work before batteries/electricity? | [
"You may have seen a pendulum swinging under a [grandfather clock](_URL_1_). One neat thing about pendulums is that the period of the swing (that is, how long it takes to swing back and forth) depends on the length and weight of the pendulum, not how far it's swinging, so as long as the length or weight doesn't change the period won't change. If you are careful about constructing your pendulum, you can know pretty precisely how long it will take to swing and build your clock accordingly (such that, for example, every swing takes exactly two seconds, and each time the pendulum swings to one side or the other, it nudges a gear that nudges your second arm).\n\nYou can also construct gears that don't constantly rotate the gear next to them, they ratchet the next gear one tick or tooth for every rotation. With very precise construction, again you can fine-tune your gears so that very slight changes in the speed of the gear providing power does not significantly alter the timing of the clock. There are mechanical devices with balanced weights that spin, and as they spin the centrifugal force raises the small weights up. When the weights are raised, it slows the machine; when they are down, it speeds the machine up. So it essentially holds itself at a constant speed, which you can use to drive the rest of the clock.\n\nThe clocks were powered by springs and weights. In watches, there was (and often still is) a tightly-wound spring that slowly releases its energy in a way controlled by the gears attached to it. You would have to manually wind your watch often, and yes, when it was running out of potential energy stored in the spring it would run slow. People very often had to reset the time on their watches and clocks. (Side note: this was one of the reasons why church bells and large clocks like Big Ben were so important: they were large and reliable, and the ringing of the bells helped the communities around them keep time, usually because they didn't have personal timepieces, but also to know the time to reset theirs when they did).\n\nClocks usually also have springs, but they also usually have weights attached to those springs. The strings or chains holding the weights are attached to gears attached to springs, and potential energy is stored by raising the weight to the top of the space under the clock. As the weights fall, they drive springs and gears, again controlled by those gears. The pendulum swung at a regular pace, as I explained above, and it was kept swinging by the springs and weights and gears attached providing it with energy to keep swinging. These days, grandfather clocks are more likely to be driven by electric motors and the pendulum and weights are purely for show. Back in the day, the clocks, like watches, would have to be wound [with a key](_URL_0_) that raised the weights and put tension on the spring. The clock could also be calibrated by adjusting the position of other weights that pulled on the pendulum to change its period slightly.\n\nBigger clocks could store more potential energy in the springs and weights, and the pendulums could be more carefully calibrated to be as precise as possible. That made bigger clocks more precise and more reliable (generally speaking; assuming it was a high quality timepiece in the first place).",
"> how did clocks and time pieces work before batteries/electricity?\n\nIn order to run a clock you need something which moves at a regular speed, and a way to provide constant power. The power can be provided with a wound spring and the regular motion from a pendulum. Using those things the rest of the gears of a mechanical clock can be constructed.",
"They were mechanical. With a precise and complex combination of springs and cogs, they would \"tick\" once per second. And once a day or so they would be \"wound\" which put tension back on the main spring to keep teh mechanism moving."
] |
Sunday trading hours (UK) | [
"its more a nicety to the worker who would have to work those extra hours now on the rota that has been expanded to include all day Sunday. Even if its just a rest from the rest of the week. Also any government who suggested it would suffer significantly from all the retail workers who suddenly had to work that extra day a week, the day they normally reserve for seeing their family/children. this is only me speaking as a retail worker and having discussed this with both management and other members of staff. think of it as similar to the French traditions of closing for lunch between 12-2, its not particularly helpful from a financial point of view but people wouldn't react well to having to work over this period as it gives them time to relax.",
"> Problem is all shops are only open 10-4pm \n\nNo, not all shops -- it's only for shops over 280 square metres. The little corner shops would be still open -- if you have any in your area. In London, they are easy to find. \n\n\"Small shops in England and Wales can open any day or hour. There are no trading hours restrictions in Scotland.\"\n\n > Why do we still have Sunday trading hours restrictions?\n\nBecause they still have not got around to changing it. It would be nice if those 24/7 superstores could stay open 24/7, even on a Sunday."
] |
The United States debt. Does it just keep increasing forever? what will eventually happen? | [
"Your questions;\n\nFirstly, debt=public debt. That is the one you hear in the news all the time. It is what the government owes.\n\nThe US debt is what we owe to the world, but as stated by /u/majiming it is mainly owned by the US, US institutions, and the people. If we default our perfect credit rating is harmed, and economic turmoil takes route. Will the government collapse? No. We might lose our credit rating to a downgrade. This means we are riskier then before, so if anyone lends us money they are entitled to more interest. \n\nBasically you are concerned about the debt. That's fine. But what you need to look at is the GDP to debt ratio, but the only links in a list I can find are outdated. Try searching for it on google. It wouldn't be a long, long time to pay off something like that.\n\nOur currency becomes less valuable due to inflation. This can be triggered two ways; 1)The cost of goods and services go up, or 2)The value of your currency goes down. It is a natural function of the economy if kept at a healthy rate. \n\nSource: I am an economist working in the government, graduated cum laude.",
"Yes, it does; it goes up and up forever. In the late 1600s, a group of businessmen in England lent about a million pounds (in 1600s pounds) to the government of England. The credit of the government of England was so bad at this point that the businessmen demanded concessions from the government for making such a risky loan. What they got in return was the right to issue notes against the interest on that loan, and thus created one of the first currencies based on public debt rather than a large pile of metal sitting in a vault somewhere. In order to administrate the loan, the businessmen founded the Bank of England. In 319 years, that loan has never been paid off, and there are no plans to do so. What's more important than paying off the debt is paying the interest, which is what keeps currency based on public debt stable.",
"Howdy Folks! Finance student with a Masters in May here. I also will have a minor in economics.\n\nDefaulting on the US debt will not happen any time soon, but it would be extremely scary. Defaulting on the US debt will have the same problem that defaulting on our personal debt: our credit score will tank. Most people are worried about debt, but it really isn't \"that\" bad right now. As a conservative, I absolutely hate it. But I hate it on reasons of principle, not necessity (it can go higher before I actually worry about the effects).\n\nDefault: The US Treasury Bill will shoot up in price. To understand what this will do, take a look at Greece. Remember when everyone was up in arms with Greek bonds? In December of 2011 their 3 month short term bonds were yielding just shy of 46% interest. This is a huge problem when you are going into default. Not only do you have a debt you need to pay, but this borrowing to pay the debt becomes stupidly impossible. For Greece, if the interest was 1% (like US Treasury bonds) they would have been just fine.\n\nYour bonds are now overpriced, so you can't borrow any more money. Now comes the real question. What is your debt in? Seems stupid to ask, but US debt is in United States Dollars. Not every country is like this. For the US, we can print more money to pay our debt. For smaller countries (especially ones without a currency) they are screwed. For the US, the solution would be really simple. You simply print more and more money and deflate your currency. The bad effect will be rapid inflation. Take a look at Germany just after WWI. People were paid weekly because by the next week, the pay would be double (or more!) This would happen to the US.\n\nWe can't borrow anything and our currency is worth nothing. Basically, this will severely hurt our economy in the short term. Trade between countries becomes extremely difficult because our money is no good anymore. There are a number of solutions from there, but they would take forever to write out.\n\nFinal thought for you. We spend a vast amount of our money on social programs and the military right now. If we were really close to default, do you think we would have a larger military than all of Europe combined? Our debt is relative and less than the average American has. Even more importantly, our income is growing based on our GDP and tax rate and inflation is growing just as fast. By the time it takes to pay it off, inflation will have grown our GDP to well over what it takes to pay it off and we will be just fine.\n\nTLDR: Our national bond prices would skyrocket and we would get hit with massive inflation.",
"There are several sub-answers to your question.\n1. Will the debt keep increasing forever?\nYou need to understand the difference between debt (what is the total owed) and the annual deficit (the amount borrowed each year). As long as there is a deficit, the debt will increase. There was a period in the late 90's early 00's when the US government ran surpluses and started to pay down debt. So it is possible to pay off the debt\nHowever politicians love to spend money. So as long as they can borrow, they will try to borrow and spend running large deficits. Historically kings used to borrow, but usually only for wars and other short term needs. The victor would probably use the winnings from war to repay the loans while the loser would default.\n2. What happens when we default?\nDefault as most people understand is the technical aspect of not repaying a loan. However governments can default in other ways - by cheapening the value of the dollar for example. This occurs through inflation (example Zimbabwe or Germany during the 1920s). Another type of default is changing or cheapening the \"mortgage.\" For example if you borrowed against a million dollar property and later replaced the property with a crappy condo, the bank would lose. Ordinary borrowers cannot do that, but governments can. The US did it under Nixon when the dollar was taken off the gold standard (the promise that dollars could always be converted to gold at a fixed price).\n3. Will the government collapse?\nNot likely. Most (all?) sovereign governments have defaulted at some time in their history. Various US states have defaulted especially back in the early 19th century (including during the Civil War). If a default means that the government finances are stronger than before, they will find new lenders - as many Latin American governments have done many times over. This principle is also why you can get credit after filing for bankruptcy.\n\nThe points about GDP, etc.:\nThere will be a lot about GDP and Debt-to-GDP ratios. Let me try to explain. GDP is the total income of the country. The taxes collected tend to be linked to GDP (taxes are a share of income after all). So if the debt-to-GDP ratio is low or falling, the thinking goes that the government has the ability to raise taxes to repay the debt. On the other hand if the ratio is very high or rising, the fear is that taxes will never be enough to repay the loans.",
"The USA will go bankrupt and go around begging just like some countries are doing now."
] |
How are worlds in Minecraft randomly generated? | [
"Background: Pseudorandom number generators (almost all RNG's in computing) are algorithms that take an initial value (known as the seed) and from that, generate a list of numbers that seems random (passes a slew of statistical randomness tests) despite the fact that the list is actually deterministic and repeating. Every time the PRNG is given the same seed, it will always produce the same output, but it's basically impossible to look at the output numbers and figure out what the seed was.\n\nAs you might already know, the Minecraft world generator uses an initial seed, which you can set specifically. This pretty key to how Minecraft can generate virtually infinite worlds, with very few resources. Each time in the generation process that something needs to be random, the generator can just say \"give me the next number in the list\". As long as the sequence of generation steps doesn't change, the output will always be the same.\n\nThe world generator is hierarchical (I don't know all the specifics, but I know some, modders can feel free to correct me). I.E. world generation is split into steps.\n\nThe first step is biomes, which your probably know are regions of different types of terrain (Desert, Jungle, Plains, etc.). Since Ocean is also a biome type, this step is also responsible for designating continents. If I recall correctly, a continent is something like 5000 blocks in diameter, or so, and surrounded by Ocean. The borders for biomes are drawn on the continent and biome types are assigned. At 2000 blocks or so away from the continent, Mushroom Island biomes are allowed to spawn, with some frequency (approx 1 per 500 block radius for example). Finally, every 10000 blocks or so, another continent is spawned.\n\nNext, the surface terrain is generated (contour and block type). How high the ground can get, or how steeply it can rise, are features determined by the biome type. Landscape features like rivers and lakes are probably also generated in this step, as well as flowers and grass.\n\nNext would probably be ores, which spawn below certain pre-defined depths, at some percentage rate (x out of every 100 blocks is a certain ore).\n\nFinally structures like trees, villages, mineshafts, temples, etc. Are spawned. These are unique in that they were pre-made (at least partially) by a designer, and are basically pasted into the world with some pre-defined frequency. In the case of trees, you've probably noticed that there are some trees that are basically the same, (Cedar for example) perhaps with slight random alterations. In the case of villages and mineshafts, it's a bit more complicated, as no two are exactly alike. But you've probably noticed that there are common elements that the generator appears to have pieced together.\n\nThe real magic of the process is that, because a seed is used, the world can be re-generated at any time to produce the exact same result. This means that the game doesn't have to actually generate the entire world, just the portions that it needs. The world itself is divided into \"chunks\" of 16x16x256 blocks, each of which is stored as a file in the world save folder, named with the chunk's location. The first time a player gets close enough to a chunk that the game needs to know what's in it, the world generator will run from the seed until all the blocks in that chunk have been generated. Then, the chunk is saved to a new file, and the world generator is closed. Any modifications to the chunk from then on are saved to the chunk's file.",
"Like anything else that's randomly generated, randomly. But there's some logic to the \"randomness pool\". For example, if the first block is water, the ones around it has to be either water or land, and has to be within jumping range. Once you hit land, you have a higher chance of being land than water, so now you have an island. And as you dig down, there's a 2% for each ore type to spawn instead of a dirt/cobble. And a 7% chance of nothing. This nothing block now has a 60% chance of generating more nothing along with the 2% and 7%, so now you have an underground passage. But let's get back to the water around you. If, within a 10 block radius, there's nothing but water, lets spawn a (minefcraft_water_mob_name) lets just call it a whale. So now you have a whale swimming around your island with underground passages that may or may not have ores."
] |
If a person's heart stops, and blood stops going to their organs, they become brain dead, and then dead dead; why can't we just pump oxygenated blood through them artificially after an hour or so, to revive them? Why do they stay dead? | [
"On my phone but basically, your body uses oxygen as the final electron acceptor as it makes ATP (this is the form of energy the cells in your body use). No oxygen = no ATP can be formed. If there is no ATP, your body can't pump sodium out of the cells with the Na+/K+ ATPase pump, and the cell gets filled with lots of sodium ions. Water outside the cells \"follow\" sodium, and the cells get too big and burst, releasing cell contents and obviously killing the cell. This happens well within an hour of loss of blood flow, and isn't reversible.",
"First, there is no difference between \"brain dead\" and \"dead dead\". Once your brain is dead, you are dead. Period.\n\nOnce your brain dies from loss of O2/blood flow, no amount of O2 blood will bring it back. All cells start to degrade the second they die.",
"Decay.\n\nPeople can't be revived too long after death for the same reason that a steak has an expiration date.\n\n\nPeople are made of meat, and meat has a short shelf-life. Your brain five minutes after death may seem identical to the way it was just before you took your last breath, but oxygen deprivation does massive damage very quickly.",
"Once you run out of oxygen, your cells won't be able to make enough ATP and will run out (this is what oxygen is used for, ATP is then used for pretty much everything). At this point they can't do anything so they're dead. \n\nIf you were to add more oxygen later, that won't help though. That's because the process to make ATP uses a (smaller) amount of ATP. Since you need ATP to make ATP, you can't just restart from nothing.\n \nAnd that's not even counting all the unstable enzymes that are essential to various processes and that have decayed so you now have none and there's no way to make more fast enough.\n\nTL;DR: Your body's systems go in a loop, once you cut it you can't just restart since you need the thing before as well as the oxygen and that's gone now.",
"That being said, there is a technology out there called \"extra corporeal membrane oxygenation\" (ECMO) that acts to oxygenate the blood and pump it through the body. It basically bypasses the heart and lungs (like what they use when doing heart transplants). So there is kind of a way to do what you suggest. It's just that the byproducts of anaerobic cellular metabolism and decay make tissues non-viable in relatively short order after the normal oxygenation and perfusion stop.",
"Cells die without oxygen, then start to rot. Period. It's the point of no return."
] |
How do pirates still exist today/what exactly do they do? | [
"More or less the same things they've always done: hijack ships in order to steal the ship itself and/or its cargo and/or hold the crew for ransom. Piracy really hasn't changed much for most of human seafaring history. \n\nWhen people think of modern pirates they usually think of Somalia although the problem isn't limited to those waters. Modern pirates will approach large commercial ships generally using small, faster craft. They are usually heavily armed and often fire a few warning shots to let the target ship know they mean business. After boarding the ship, it can go a few different ways: they might take valuables and/or hostages and leave, or they might take the ship itself to a friendly port and use it as a \"mother ship\" for future piracy operations. The hostages are used to demand payment in order to secure their release. Despite all the danger, deaths due to piracy are rare.",
"Pretty much what they always did... they use small, agile, heavily armed craft to approach cargo craft. Then they usually board them, and/or threaten them with some kind of heavy weapons... and seize the ship+cargo+crew. \n\nRansom the crew, ransom or sell the cargo and the ship.",
"There are modern pirates doing the same thing that the pirates of history and legend did: They board ships and rob them.\n\nSome significant percentage of international commerce takes place on the world's oceans. In days past, it wasn't uncommon for pirates to be employed by a royal naval force to harass the trade of a nation's enemies. Renegade bands of pirates would do the same thing on their own hook for personal profit. Pirates in modern times are basically gang members - criminals who pool their resources for mutual advantage.\n\nModern military-grade weaponry and government-funded, militarized anti-terror units have made kidnapping and robbery on the high seas potentially a much riskier proposition than it once was. Additionally, the sheer size of modern shipping vessels makes them vastly more difficult to commandeer. Still, while piracy has been all but eradicated in many places where it once flourished, it is on the rise in certain parts of the world.\n\nThe Gulf of Aden was once a hotbed of commercial piracy, having experienced a number of notable incidents in the last few decades. More recently, piracy has been increasing in southeast Asia. In these places, the gangs successfully conducting piracy will sometimes even have their own container ships which they use to overtake laden vessels under way, kidnap their crews, and steal their cargo.",
"It's worth noting who modern pirates are.\n\nToday pirates mostly come from very poor communities, eg those on the coasts of Somalia.\n\nRansom is one of the easiest but riskiest ways to get cash.\n\nPiracy is super dangerous and not a good career at all by developed standards, but the ransom for a few crew members is an awful lot of money for the world's ultra poor. A successful ransom is a big cause of celebration for a small rural village."
] |
Why do certain sounds, such as nails against a chalkboard, make us cringe? | [
"Iirc (i am a bit jurassic), the sound is made of frequencies at both ends of our natural range of hearing, but are NOT harmonic of each other. The auditory cortex has difficulty trying to make sense of the noise, causing unpleasant feeling.sorry i can't cite, and this may be incomplete explanation."
] |
How does a ship force a submarine to leave an area? | [
"The only thing a submarine has is stealth. It uses the depths, different thermal layers and silent operations to hide in the background ocean noise.\n\nGetting detected means the submarine is pretty much a sitting duck. It reflects either a mistake made by the submarine crew, or the skills of the surface fleet at anti submarine warfare. Attack submarines following or monitoring enemy fleets, even during peace time is common.\n\nWhen they get detected, enemy attack subs do things like blast their sonar, surface ships and aircraft drop sonar buoys over the location of the detected submarine. So the detected submarine gets chased away, and will most likely try to follow again without getting detected again.",
"Find it, ping the area, get in position where you could drop a depth-charge, and if they haven't freaked out and GTFO'd yet, you drop a depth-charge and send their souls to the depths. ...depther depths? \n\nThe sonar ping is not subtle. It's essentially shouting \"HEY\" on the surface and seeing if anything bounces back. The sub knows the boat is running active sonar pings, and knows exactly where the boat is. If they hear a ping, and then they hear a closer ping, they know the boat found them and could kill them all in short order."
] |
How can there be so many federal laws and regulations which aren't in the constitution? - The Tenth Amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." | [
"Your answer is in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. This portion of the document empowers Congress to do a great many things, but the most important for your question are \"to...provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States\" and \"to To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.\" Both of these clauses provide a basis for most of Congress's legislation. \n\n\nRegulations are a somewhat separate matter. They are created by the executive branch. The power to create them comes out of \"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.\" And modern courts have consistently held that the president has the ability to delegate that executive authority (he can't do it all, after all) to executive agencies. Executive agencies create regulations.",
"You'd have to actually name a specific law for anyone to answer this. Most likely the laws *are* covered by the constitution, just not in a way you can see. This bit in particular ends up being used a lot: \"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;\" (more than it should be in my opinion, but that's just my opinion and not that of the Supreme Court).",
"The Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce.\n\nThe Supreme Court has given it a very broad interpretation, allowing anything business or product that goes over state lines, or even *might* go over state lines, to be subject to federal law.\n\nThis has seriously undermined the 10th Amendment."
] |
Why do gas stations with the same name, have different prices from location to location? | [
"Most such gas stations are part of something called a franchise, which means that the physical gas station you're at doesn't actually belong to the company that owns the name. Instead, the owner of the gas station pays fees to the company that owns the name, wears their uniforms, and follows their standard business model in exchange for the right to display that companies logo. The idea is that in doing so the gas station will get increased business because people will recognize the name as one with which they're familiar.\n\nFast food is another industry where this is common."
] |
Why do Americans in the highest income bracket and with the most education tend to consume the most alcohol? | [
"You are confused by the poll. The poll doesn't say that rich drinkers drink more than poor drinkers, it says that rich people are less likely to claim to be total abstainers.\n\nWhy might this be? I can think of four reasons. The most likely reason for an American to abstain totally from alcohol are (1) membership in a fringe religious group, (2) recovering alcoholic, (3) has spent time around alcoholics and hates alcohol as a result, or (4) has very severe health problems thay prevent drinking.\n\nPoor Americans are more likely to belong to extreme churches, to suffer from alcoholism to the point they cannot function, and to have life-threatening chronic disease. So they are more likely to try to quit. Note that this is not the same as saying that richer Americans drink more by volume.",
"Well there are a few angles we could look at this from.\n\nThe first one could look at it from the perspective of the idea of risk compensation. People who believe they are in a position of safety tend to behave more risky and vice versa. In college, heavy drinking is common (albeit not as common as portrayed in some media) and you tend to learn how to \"drink safely\". With the knowledge of proper drinking acquired through years of trial and error, people become more willing to take the risk that comes with drinking under the assumption that they've had good experiences in the past and thus can't have problems with it\n\nIn that same line of reasoning, they may have developed a taste for alcoholic beverages or an increased tolerance while in college, allowing them to drink with regularity and not suffer adverse consequence.\n\nIt could be a financial thing. People at the higher end of the social scale tend to have more expendable income and for many people alcohol is considered a luxury. Having the means to be able to drink more regularly allows for the above two prescribed scenarios.\n\nThere have been a few studies that have shown that money only affects your happiness up to a certain point. Once you have the means to provide for yourself comfortably, money's relation to happiness is actually pretty minimal as you move up the pay scale. So by this logic, depression and the alcohol dependence that can frequently accompany it, would be equivocal between the wealthy and the population at large.\n\nPeople like drinking and so having the means is usually the only barrier but the study in question doesn't say they drink more, it only says a higher percentage of the wealthy drink and that could be caused by any of the things I've mentioned.",
"Why do even polling organizations like Gallop not label their fucking graph axes? Graphs should be readable at a glance, random numbers with no labels mean nothing unless you read the article.",
"Alcohol is the legal/socially acceptable drug-of-choice for those who are most succesful at the game of life."
] |
Why do sunburns feel warm? | [
"Blood is rushed to those areas for repair thus causing the feeling of more heat in a specific piece of your body."
] |
Do worms travel with a single orientation? Do they have a "belly" side that they usually travel facing down with? Or do they just move without caring about their rotation? | [
"They have a \"belly\" (abdominal) and a back (dorsal). They are not symmetrical inside. The neural system is the top side, the digestive system is the bottom side. And they aware of which side is up and down.",
"Not all \"worms\" have the same body plan.\n\nSegmented worms, earthworms for example, are bilaterally symmetrical, and have a dorsal (upper) and ventral (lower) side. These characteristics are shared with all segmented creatures, ranging from earthworms to insects to vertebrates. Note: tapeworms, although \"segmented,\" are not members of these groups.\n\nAs pointed out in the thread above, creatures with dorsal/ventral body plans are \"aware\" of their physical orientation.",
"So if you turn a worm on its dorsal side will they first rotate before crawling away? I think it is time for a science experiment."
] |
Why are wedding dresses white? | [
"Because Queen Victoria wore a white dress when she married Albert in the middle of the 19th century. A white wedding dress became fashionable, then the fashion turned into a tradition.",
"And just to add: not *all* wedding dresses are traditionally white. For example, chinese wedding dresses are **red** (the colour for 'good luck').\n\nOf course, the Western tradition is now spreading, but that's quite a recent turn."
] |
Why does our vision look black and white when it is dark and our eyes get adjusted? | [
"In our eyes we have two different recepters called rods and cones. Cones help us see color and rods help us decern between light and dark. Cones are only useful if there is light, because color is a reflection of white light. Rods, on the other hand, are fantastic at making out shapes and figures when there is no light around. With no cones active, we are using only our rods making everything appear black and white.",
"There are two types of light sensitive cells - rods and cones. The cone cells each contain one of three different rhodopsin proteins which respond to different wavelengths of light - red, green and blue - allowing perception of colour.\n\nRods are more sensitive to light and can be activated by much less light than cones. Rods only contain one type of rhodopsin however so you cannot differentiate colours in low light.",
"We have two types of cameras in our eyes. \n\nOne's great in taking colour photos but is blind in low light – cones. The other has great low light performance but can't tell colours — rods.\n\nIn the dark, our mind has to settle for what the rods say. Night blindness is caused due to weak rods."
] |
Can dogs understand other dogs when they bark? | [
"Dogs don't bark in a language like how you speak English. Languages are an invention which must be taught to our children and requires constant care and revision to be mutually intelligible. Dog barks are extremely simple vocalizations. Though it is probable that dogs have a better idea of why another dog is barking than your average human, that doesn't mean that there's any content for the dog to \"understand\". Dogs don't bark to communicate with each other in sentences, they are merely vocalizations that are indicative of aroused emotional states."
] |
When it's sunny out, how does closing one eye allow you to open the other eye fully without discomfort? | [
"Because when you close one eye, you're instantly stopping 50% of the light from entering your brain. That's why you wouldn't feel discomfort."
] |
Please help me understand what systemic vascular resistance is. | [
"Emergency Med. PA-C here. SVR is the back-pressure within your arteries that your heart must overcome each contraction to pump blood to the rest of the body"
] |
what's going on with YouTube? | [
"I hihly recommend watching Ethens (h3h3Production) explaining what's going on. Basically what's happening is, that the people or the companies who want to advertise on YT are signing a contract. In the contract they can check boxes where it says something like -\nIt's okay if the video I want to advertise on has: \n\n* Sexual content \n* Violent content \n* Strong language \n\netc. pp. \n\nAs Ethen pointed out, most firms wouldn't check any of those boxes. Therefore the videos can't be monetized. The problem that arises with this is that the content creators are forced to limit their topics radically. In this sense they can't talk about news because they might be brutal, they can't talk about suicide or any serious topic because it wouldn't fit into the \"non-sexual, non-violent, non-controversial\"-guidelines. \n\nBut as Ethen also says, this seems to based on an algorythm that puts videos with certain tags (like #rape, #killing, #sex etc.) on some kind of blacklist. So the easy way out would be to stop using those tags and titles.\n\n\nEDIT: This is the video I was referring to: _URL_0_",
"There's no controversy, just a bunch of lame \"creators\" who don't know how to create content without stealing other content and they're crying about free speech like YouTube is the gov or something."
] |
How and where does acid in our stomach come from? | [
"Sure, we start out as a mass of cells, but that doesn't really say much. Cells are capable of a variety of tasks. Detecting light, moving the body, pumping blood, firing electrical impulses, creating new cells. Producing acid isn't especially unique as a 'cool thing cells can do,' cells do all kinds of crazy things including synthesizing lots of chemicals. \n\n\nOur stomach itself has gastric glands, with cells called parietal cells. These cells produce the hydrochloric acid we use in our stomachs, by combining hydrogen ions (derived from a combination of water and carbon dioxide we have taken in) and chloride ions (which we have also taken in, for instance in salts). This is secreted along with potassium chloride and sodium chloride to form the stew we call stomach acid. \n\nThis process occurs continuously, to replenish our stomach acid as it is depleted."
] |
the difference between murder and assassination. | [
"Assassination is to murder as beagle is to dog. Assassination is a specific type of murder generally defined by its political nature or the prominence/celebrity of the target.",
"Assassination is generally political in nature. When JFK or MLK was shot it was for a political statement and therefore an assassination. Also if the US government decided to kill a single individual that is an assassination. \n\nMurder is for a personal gain without political ramifications.",
"They way it seems to be used these days is pretty simple.\n\nIf you are important you are assassinated.\n\nRegular Joes get murdered."
] |
today's science's view of the shape of the universe. | [
"If you're referring to the \"observable universe\", it is the distance from Earth we've been able to observe. It's a sphere because earth is a sphere. That is not the whole universe"
] |
"pretty sure you're in some list now." Does the government really tag each individual as possible "criminals?" And if you do something illegal do they use this information gathered on you? Is this legal? | [
"It depends on what you do and if you get caught. If you get caught doing something illegal then yes the offence will be put in public records so anyone can look you up. You probably aren't on a list unless there is a reason you should be."
] |
Under what circumstance could residents of the United States overthrow the government if said person/organization would immediately be charged with treason and/or imprisonment? | [
"The entire point of overthrowing a government is that the usurpers are declaring that the government is not valid, and than none of its laws apply. If they succeed, then they rewrite the laws, and will not be charged with a crime by the new government that they create.\n\nBasically, overthrowing the government is only illegal if you fail.",
"[Here's a fine example of how it might go down](_URL_0_).\n\nWhile much of that plot was never substantiated, and seemingly even more was swept under the rug, I would suggest that you first read this paragraph from the wikipedia page, and then read the rest with this in mind:\n\nThe Congressional committee final report said:\n\nIn the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."
] |
Does the Earth make a sonic boom? | [
"It doesn't, because it isn't moving trough anything. Sonic speed is based on the medium propagating the sound. No medium, no sound, no speed of sound, no sonic boom."
] |
What determines if gas is expelled out the body as flatulence or a belch? | [
"If the gas is liberated in the stomach, it goes up as a belch. If the gas is liberated once passed the pylorus, it will exit as a fart",
"Not a biologist, but trying to apply common sense here: for a belch, the air would probably mostly enter your stomach alongside your food - think carbonated drinks, or maybe air trapped inside food is released as it starts to break down.\n\nIf it comes out the other end, my guess would be that it was actually created there, due to gut bacteria doing their thing, chemically splitting up the food into its key components so your body can make use of it, and creating some gas as a byproduct.\n\nGiven the amount of control you have over the volume of both types of gas you can expell simply by choosing certain foods, I guess that could be a reasonable explanation."
] |
Computer terms like SSD, RAM, HDD? | [
"ELI5: I like to compare the operation of a computer like a person working at a desk. This analogy may be a bit old, but I think it's apt for a 5-year old.\n\nCPU: The CPU is the person working at the desk. No two people are the same, some are faster, some are slower, some are better at performing certain tasks than others. The clock rate (measured in MHz/GHz) is how fast that person works. A clock rate of 1GHz means that that person can perform 1 billion operations per second. Some CPUs can perform certain tasks in less operations, which is why a GHz comparison between two CPUs of different architectures (like something from AMD and something from Intel) isn't an accurate comparison of speed.\n\nMulti-core processors are like multiple people working at the same desk. They can't necessarily work on the same thing at the same time (unless the task is able to be split up between them) but they can work on separate things at the same time. Hyper-Threading is like multitasking, one person can work on two things at the same time, but they usually can't perform as well as two people each doing one of those things.\n\nRAM: RAM is the size of the desk. You can only fit so many things on the desk before you have to put those things away or get rid of them. You can work on anything on your desk.\n\nHDD/SSD: HDDs are like filing cabinets. They can hold a lot more than your desk. However, you can't work on anything in a filing cabinet. You need to take something out of the filing cabinet and put in on your desk before you can work on it.\n\nSSDs are much faster than HDDs. They're like the drawers in your desk. You can put stuff in the drawers much faster than your filing cabinet, and you can take stuff out of your drawers much faster than your filing cabinet, but you can fit a lot more in your filing cabinet than your drawers.",
"SSD means \"Solid state drive\" - most hard drives have moving pieces in them, but these don't- they're chip based. They're typically faster than normal hard drives because they don't have to move anything around.\n\nRAM means \"random access memory\" - You probably have a desk you sit at while you do work. RAM is kind of like your computer's desk, in that it stores data it's working with there, like you might spread books and papers out on a table while you're working on something. The more RAM you have, the more things you can have going on at once.\n\nHDD - means Hard Disk Drive. It's the opposite of solid state—this one has spinning disks inside. They're a little slower, but typically hold a lot more data and are far cheaper.\n\nHope that helps! Feel free to ask anything else about computers."
] |
why is it that elderly people tend to wake up earlier the older they get? | [
"You're looking at a biased sample set. Once they get old enough, they don't wake up at all.",
"If you are interesed in the science behind this, it can be explained with the functions of the pineal gland. It has a significant role in regulating our circadian rythm/biological clock. The pineal gland produces a hormone called melatonin, which modulates our sleep patterns and is responsible for making us sleepy. The production of this hormone depends on the amount of light you recieve through your retina- the darker it gets,the more melatonin is produced by the gland ,the sleepier you get! But everything starts to change when you're about 7 years old- the gland starts to slowly degenerate, and the production of melatonin starts to decrease.\nSo the lack of melatonin is the reason why elderly people sleep less and less by every passing year. \nI hope this answered your question :)",
"i don't know the science behind it but, what i know is they require very less sleep as they grow older. i don't know why. my grandpa is around 90 and he rarely sleeps."
] |
How can so many movies claim they are the "#1 movie in America" and not be lying? | [
"By not defining what they mean by \"#1.\" If they don't say it's the #1 movie at the box office, or the #1 movie according to critical rating, or #1 highest rated movie on metacritic user reviews, or such, they're not lying. By not quantifying it they can easily decide for themselves what it means, and argue that it's just an opinion, that it's considered the \"#1 best movie in America\" by \"some people\". If you can produce one person who believes that, it's not lying. Even if it's someone who worked on the damn movie.",
"because it doesn't say who is making that judgment. every movie can claim #1 movie in america b/c it's an opinion, and when advertised it doesn't say who made that opinion. so the advertising companies can make that opinion and it would be a true opinion.\n\njust like i can say i have the biggest dick in the world and not be lying. statement is so vague."
] |
What does "paper money has no intrinsic value" mean and what are some examples to help understand the word "intrinsic"? | [
"Intrinsic means inherent value that the item has just for existing. When they say money has no intrinsic value, they are basically saying that money is valuable because WE say it is valuable, not because money is naturally valuable.",
"Intrinsic means of itself. Gold is useful because you can use it for jewelry, electronics, and other important things.\n\nDiamonds are useful in that you can use them as drill bits, knife sharpeners, laser focusing, etc.\n\nPaper money itself is quite worthless. You can...wipe your face? Burn it to make a fire? It's only value is the fact that we assigned it value based on the number printed on it."
] |
Where did the tradition of having bedrooms on the second floor come from? | [
"Bedrooms have been upstairs since houses had two stories, because it puts them away from the public spaces, away from the livestock, and away from some of the creatures that crawl around on the ground. Also it's warmer in the winter, and catches more breezes in the summer.",
"Heat rises. Be it cattle, fires or central heating.\n\nAlso, in the days of cattle in the same building, it was quite hard to get the cattle to go upstairs.\n\n* ~~their (belongs to them)~~ they're (they are)",
"When you have guests it's more comfortable to have them in just the ground floor.\n\nThe guests will possibly need to use your living room, bathroom and maybe kitchen.\n\nSo you put the bedroom out of sight, it's not a room you'd use regulary or expect others to use. So you kinda hide it away.",
"I think it comes from various sources and traditions. In big castles, mansions, and similar buildings the more public areas are on the main floor close to the entrance. Living quarters were up.\n\nIn pioneer days log cabins would often be built with a loft...a partial upper level that was mainly used for sleeping. Again the more public and mainly used parts of the home (cooking,eating,working, living) was the main floor. The 'beds' were out of the way up in the loft.\n\nSame thing with your classic middle class 2 story home, bedrooms upstairs and out of the way.",
"In addition to the comments about heat rising, there are other practical issues of bedrooms being private spaces rather than public where you might entertain guests, ones where you’d want to keep out dirty, wet, etc. outerwear that can be left on the lower level.",
"Ground floor bedrooms are helpful if the sleeper is disabled. If you are interested in learning more about the history of bedrooms and how houses are arranged, you might like a book called *If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home* by Lucy Worsley, published in 2011."
] |
How do you run for president? | [
"- Convince a few wealthy people you'd make a good President and get them to help finance your campaign. Alternatively, be wealthy enough to fund yourself in the early stages.\n\n- Enter the primaries for one of the major parties, campaign hard in each state, press flesh, get people to believe in you, and solicit more donations.\n\n- Win the primary, and campaign across the country with the full backing of the party machine.",
"well first, we have to know what country you're asking about. But because I'm an ignorant, selfish Piece of Shit, I'll assume you're talkin' about the great ol' US of A.\n\nRequirements include that you be at least 35 years old, be born in the United States of America, and have lived in the US for a total of 14 years.\n\nIf you meet those requirements, you announce that you're running for President and then kiss ass to rich people trying to get campaign funds. When you get campaign funds, use them efficiently in states where you are likely to get a lot of voters to advertise yourself\n\nFinally, enter the primaries and win them. \n\nPretty simple, really."
] |
Why can't we build a graviton detector? | [
"Basically, gravitons are just really hard to detect because their interaction with matter is so limited. We have the same problem with neutrons. It takes massive underground tanks just to detect a couple neutrinos. Detecting gravitons is several orders of magnitudes larger.\n\nTo simplify the passage you posted, if we had a detector the size of Jupiter, it would only detect one graviton every 10 years because most of them would pass right through without touching any of the matter. There's also no way to tell the difference between a graviton and a neutrino - filtering out the neutrinos is almost impossible."
] |
How do you stop texting and driving? | [
"Easy. Just don't text and drive. If you have a condition where you literally cannot stop texting, you should seek a medical professional, but for most people it's just a matter of self control.",
"If you can't control yourself, turn off your phone and put it out of reach in your car, like the backseat."
] |
What are the actual requirements for the Police to make an lawful arrest and detentions? | [
"If they observe a law being broken they are allowed to make an arrest. If they have a warrant for someone's arrest they can make an arrest. They can temporarily detain someone with probable cause to assess the situation and determine whether a law has been broken, or civil infraction has occured.",
"Probable cause: \n\na set of facts or circumstances that would lead a reasonably prudent person to believe a crime is being committed, has been committed, or is about to be committed."
] |
Is is Possible for a Moon (Satellite) to Have its own Moon? | [
"Yep. It's completely possible. From a physics standpoint there's really no different between the Moon orbiting the Earth and the Moon orbiting the Earth which is orbiting the Sun. The reason you don't see many natural satellite around planets' moon is because, on a long enough timeline and given the relatively small distance between planets and moons, the planet's gravity is going to \"win\" and the moon will lose the satellite.\n\nBut there are still bodies orbiting moons which orbit planets, they're put there by us. There are satellites (artificial) around the Moon. Same dynamic.",
"Yes, in theory, though I don't know if any have been found yet. The region of space around an object where a satellite can exist is called the Hill sphere. Outside the Hill sphere, a satellite would be lost from its orbit about the object.\n\nAn easy example is the Sun-Earth-Moon system. Earth is a satellite of the sun and the moon is a sub-satellite orbiting Earth. The Earth's Hill sphere has a radius of 1.5 million km and the moon orbits the Earth at 370,000 km from Earth, well inside it. Loosely speaking, the Hill sphere defines the space where the Earth's gravity is more important than the sun's gravity on another object. If the moon was outside the Earth's Hill sphere, the moon would orbit the Sun instead of the Earth just like all the other planets, asteroids, and comets. \n\nFor comparison, Jupiter's Hill sphere has a radius of about 52,360,000 km which is much much larger than the Earth's Hill sphere. This is because of 2 reasons: 1. Jupiter is more massive than the Earth and has a stronger gravitational pull, but more importantly 2. it is further from the Sun than Earth so the Sun's gravity is weaker at Jupiter than at Earth.",
"I think this video will probably answer your question: _URL_0_\n\n(short answer: the interference from the planet would generally make it unlikely)."
] |
Why do elderly people get shorter as they age? | [
"It's most likely to do with posture and strength of the intervertebral discs within your spine. In your spine, between each vertebrae (bones surrounding and protecting your spinal cord) are discs full of fluid (known as intervertebral discs). As you age, you lose this fluid, which leads to those discs becoming compressed. This can somewhat shorten your spine. Also, as you age, your muscles aren't as strong as they were before and you lose your upright posture. \n\n & nbsp;\n\nEDIT: I should also mention osteoporosis. Bones lose some of their density due to a loss of calcium within the bone. This makes bones more susceptible to compression."
] |
How do Americans afford/pay for their extortionate healthcare fees and why is the government so unwilling to help? | [
"I'm from the U.K., live in the US now. I'm a healthy 23 year old and my health insurance is about $150 a month. My deductible is $6k. \n\nThe problem, or at least how I see it is, the health care industry here is a massive, multi-billion dollar industry that makes a lot of people very rich. For Christs sake, there's hospitals here with huge fuck-off fountains in the lobby. Marbled floors, etc. Pharmaceutical companies advertise their medications on TV and tell people to ask their doctors about them. (Yes, America, this blew my mind when I moved here.) \n\nMeanwhile, others lose their homes getting treatment for an ambulance ride, cancer, a car accident, etc. The government, at this point, can't/won't turn around and establish an NHS-style health system because 1. Money. 2. There's a lot of 'socialist' propaganda that people who live in countries with taxpayer funded free healthcare die waiting in the ER for treatment because everything is free so there's always a huge wait. 3. Healthcare industry lobbyists make sure that shit wouldn't pass. 4. People don't want to pay for other people's health care. 5. Money, again.",
"Most Americans can't actually afford their healthcare. So your option is hope that random pain you're feeling isn't serious enough to put you down so badly other people take you to the ER. Or alternatively hope it kills you quickly so that there is no need for a doctor.\n\nGovt. doesn't give a shit for a multitude of reasons but they get taxpayer subsidized healthcare.",
"I don't have a good answer on the government side of it but personally, before aca, I was fucked. I'm still paying for a gallbladder surgery I had in 2010. I never went to the doctor and only sought care when it was an emergency. In the event of an emergency, they have to see you. So when the bill came, I just didn't pay it. Eventually most of them fell off my credit report. I didn't know about this when I didn't have insurance but at least in my state they have low income clinics where the fee is based on a sliding scale depending on your income. \nEdit: I'm also going to note that I've been engaged for 2.5 years and can't get married because when I do, I'll have to claim his income and I will no longer qualify for my current insurance and I'll have to take his insurance. To add me to his insurance is an extra 350 dollars a month and isn't even as good as my current insurance.",
"If you hang out on Reddit too much you'll get the impression we're all working at McDonalds, Walmart or Starbucks and one doctor visit away from bankruptcy. I'm not saying there's not an insignificant number of people that that above scenario wouldn't be true, but in general the healthcare problem tends to impact the working class & lower middle class more so, and especially those of the typical University age bracket. Which not surprisingly aligns with Reddit's demographics. People with without legal immigration status, and/or non-citizens also tend lack health care options for a variety of reasons.\n\nWhen you drop further down to poverty levels there actually tends to be more gov't options for free/very low cost gov't funded healthcare and support through Medicaid and other state programs. A lot varies depending on the state you live in, your family size, if you're pregnant, have a child, and specific income levels. Our states are comparatively much more independent in how they are run than you may realize. \n\nI'm a typical boring unmarried dude in IT working a full time salary type job without kids. My yearly deductible is ~$500. And my yearly max out of pocket is ~$2400. For just medical coverage it's about ~$90 a month through my employer. If you tack on Dental and Vision its slightly higher, but by like 20 bucks. My SO has admittedly exceptional coverage, around similar levels and doesn't contribute anything monthly out of paycheck. Neither the deductible or out-of-pocket cost would represent a financial hardship for us. Speaking as an individual, I probably end up paying less in taxes and overall cost than you do in the UK. \n\nAs you can see, aside from altruistic ideals, there's very little incentive for me to get on board with raising taxes and paying more in healthcare costs. I'm not *that* unusual in my circumstances either. The middle class and upper middle class and above tends to be fine. Between a significant portion of the population who has perfectly adequate health care options through their employer, and an extremely powerful private insurance lobby, we're stuck in situation we are today.",
"As for why \"the government\" doesn't care, you have to remember that the government of the US is not a monolithic entity. When you are talking about them, you really mean the leadership of the Republican Party who currently control all three branches.\n\nAs for their motives, they are not opposed to healthcare, they just have core principles against government healthcare:\n\n1) They believe that healthcare is something to be earned, not a right granted by the government\n\n2) They don't want to pay for what they consider other people's bad choices - like poor eating leading to diabetes.\n\n3) They are deeply, fundamentally, intrinsically opposed to taxes - especially on the rich. They believe that reducing taxes on the wealthy encourages them to re-invest in the economy. \n\n4) Related to #3, they believe that the government is inherently inefficient, and anything the government can do private industry can do better.\n\nState-funded single payer healthcare violates all four of those and so they oppose it intensely. What we seem to be seeing now is a bit of a split between Republican leadership and Republican voters, however, so we'll see if it has any effects in the next few elections.",
"American here. We don't. A huge majority of us simply do not have insurance and do not go to the doctor unless it's life threatening.\n\nIn our country there is a law which prevents the hospitals from denying services in life threatening situations whether you have insurance or not. They have to treat you. Then they send you a massive bill and you declare bankruptcy. That is seriously the method for many many people in this country.\n\nEven employer provided health insurance that is purchased at a discount can run several hundred dollars to a thousand dollars per month for a family and then they have a several thousand dollar deductible to meet before insurance begins to pay for anything.\n\nFor the most part, if you are a healthy adult without the need for medical attention in general then you save more money by not carrying insurance.\n\nIts just too much money. Its just that simple.\n\nThe biggest problem is that you can't have assistance unless you are dirt poor and you can't afford it unless you are fairly wealthy. Everyone in between is just left dangling.",
"I've never had any issues, and I'm barely middle class. Every hospital I've ever been in treats every one regardless of insurance or ability to pay. That right there has a lot to do with why the prices are so high. Every hospital I've been in offers financial assistance through them, local churches, and the they will just right off the rest. I have my own private insurance (did not purchase an Obamacare plan or go to the \"exchanges\"). My deductible is always paid off rather quickly. After that my insurance pays for 100% unless I go to the ER and it wasn't necessary to go to an ER. I think people in other countries really don't understand that it's not nearly as bad as people think it is. Heck I suffered a stroke, had both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, got state of the art care, and all my medical bills are now paid, 4 years later. I did not have to file bankruptcy, I have a place to live, I'm comfortable enough.",
"The fees sound so exorbitant because hospitals expect people to have private insurance pay the overwhelming majority of the cost. It costs people more than a single-payer system but it provides excellent quality.",
"Sometimes going to a clinic or to a non-affiliated doctor and paying for services out of pocket is cheaper than your insurance premiums + copays."
] |
How can generic supermarket brands like Great Value and Kirkland produce such a variety of different products and and still maintain good quality and value? | [
"They don't pay for advertising. \n\nTheir products are usually made by the exact same manufacturers as the \"brand name\" products you would otherwise buy. However, those other products spend a significant amount of money on advertising.\n\nYou know all that \"free\" stuff you get everywhere? Like free radio? Free reddit? Free youtube? Free broadcast TV? \n\nWell, it's not really free. You pay for it by inflated prices when you buy name-brand goods.",
"they don't produce the goods, they get them from contract manufacturers like many other food companies.",
"This was my job for years. \n\nGeneric products are nearly always made of much, *much* lower quality raw ingredients than name brands; in fact they're usually made from raw ingredients the name brands have rejected. That's why generics are made \"by the exact same manufacturers\" - if one load of tomatoes arrives at the plant underripe, misshapen, and watery they'll simply assign that load to the generic label rather than risk giving the name brand label a bad reputation. (There are also economies of labelling and containers; generic pears taste like the tin because the interior of the tin isn't coated with a non-reactive polymer.)\n\nDon't fall for the stupid bullshit logical fallacy that \"exact same manufacturer\" means \"exact same *product*\". With a very few exceptions\\* it does not. Using the same machinery for high-quality and low-quality produce does not magically raise the quality of the latter.\n\n\\* Products that are strictly regulated are usually excepted, as are products so simple or so inexpensive to produce that there's no reason to try to cut corners. Corn starch and canola oil are the gold standard for the latter, raw poultry (in Canada) the former.\n\nEdit to add: they don't need advertising, of course; they just need gullible \"frugal\" shoppers who get an ego boost out of smugly embracing false economy. A $1.50 can of tomatoes isn't a better buy than a $1.80 can if it has less actual tomato in it."
] |
Why does a negative number when multiplied by another negative equal a positive? | [
"Because it actually is just getting negated twice. So -2 × -5 = -(-10) = 10 \n\nThe reason --10 = 10 is essentially because negation is making things opposite, and if you flip things twice, you generally end up back where you started. What's the opposite of Up? Down... What's the opposite of Down? Up. So what's the opposite of the opposite of Up? It's back to being Up.\n\nAs for real world applications... there are too many to count. Some really important ones being chemistry, physics, and accounting.",
"> Is there any real application of this? \n\nIn the English language, two negatives make a positive. For example, \"Taylor Swift is not *not* hot\" = \"Taylor Swift is hot.\"\n\nBut seriously though. You asked about numbers. Here's the best way to wrap your head around this concept... numbers are moving along a line. A number line. Each hash mark on the line = 1. It has a 0 mark in the middle and goes out to infinity in front of you (positive numbers) and infinity behind you (negative numbers). \n\nThe first number is steps you take along the number line. The second number is movement - the direction you travel and the number of times you do it.\n\n > 2 x 3 = 6\n\nYou start at zero. You're going to make three positive moves (meaning you don't change the way you're facing, you look at the positive numbers). Each move is going to consist of two positive steps (steps forward). Congrats, you're now on number 6. Two positive (forward) steps, three positive (forward-facing) times. \n\n > -2 x 3 = -6\n\nYou start at zero. Prepare to make three positive moves (meaning face the positive numbers). But the two steps-per-move are negative this time (steps backwards). Now you're on -6. Two negative (backwards) steps, three positive (forward-facing) times.\n\n > 2 x -3 = -6\n\nNow something changes. Your movement is negative. This means you turn around and face the negative numbers. The steps don't change though. Positive 2 still means two steps forward. So you start on zero. Face the negative numbers. Take two positive steps, three times. You find yourself on -6. Two positive (forward) steps, three negative (backwards-facing) times.\n\n > -2 x -3 = 6\n\nYou start at zero. Your movement is negative. Face those negative numbers. Take two negative steps per move (steps backwards). After three moves, you find yourself on 6! Two negative (backwards) steps, three negative (backwards-facing) times. \n\nIt's much better with illustrations. I'll try to come back with a link I found once to help me understand. The reason it's so difficult is how often children are taught multiplication using the \"of\" method... \"2 groups *of* 3 something = 6 something\". It's a great way to teach positive multiplication, but it makes it harder to translate it out of multiplying *things* into more theoretical space. \n\nIf you have follow-up questions, I will be honest - I've reached the end of my knowledge in the ability to teach this. I hope someone else drops by and can go deeper if you're curious. \n\nedit: [found the link!](_URL_0_) didn't take me as long as I expected. It includes a few *very* easy to understand real world applications for multiplying negative numbers.",
"In physics you often use the sign as the direction. And multiplication by -1 means a turn by 180°. For example a car that drives away from you with speed of 100 would drive towards you if it's speed would be -100. Or you could imagine yourself standing on the zero with 1 in front of you and -1 behind you. Now if you do 1 * 1 = 1 nothing happens you still look forward, but the math says -1 * 1=-1 you now have to turn 180 degrees and look backwards. And -1 * -1 * 1=1 would be interpreted as \"turn 180° degrees twice!\" and you'll end up looking towards the 1 again. \n\n\nIt's rather common in physics to look at a multiplication with -1 in this way. Sometimes we even express -1 = e^(i*180°) but that won't really help you explain why -1*-1 = 1! Sorry ;D",
"multiplying by a negative flips the sign. Multiplying by a positive makes it stay the same. This is why: \n \n-1 * +1 = -1 because the negative turned the positive into a negative \n+1 * -1 = -1 because the positive kept the negative negative. \n \nAs you can see, they both make the same result. \n \n+1 * +1 = +1 because the positive kept the other positive positive \n \n-1 * -1 = +1 because the negative turned the other negative into a positive.",
"-1 is the additive inverse of 1, then, by definition: \n 1 + (-1) = 0 \n Multiplying the equation by (-1): \n (-1)(1 + (-1)) = (-1)0 \n But 0 multiplied by anything equals 0 \n (-1)(1 + (-1)) = 0 \n Distributivity of multiplication over addition: \n (-1) + (-1)(-1) = 0 \n Add 1 to both sides of the equation: \n 1 + (-1) + (-1)(-1) = 1 \n As 1 + (-1) = 0, then \n 0 + (-1)(-1) = 1 \n So \n (-1)(-1) = 1\n\n\nNow, every real number -p < 0 can be expressed as (-1)*p. \nSo if we multiply two numbers with negative sign: \n\n (-p)(-q) = (-1)p(-1)q \n\n By commutativity of multiplication \n (-p)(-q) = (-1)(-1)pq \n\nBut (-1)(-1) = 1, so \n (-p)(-q) = 1pq \n\n But 1 is the multiplicative identity element , so \n (-p)(-q) = pq\n\n\n\nedit: souce is _URL_1_ \nedit2: okay this may not be suitable for 5 year olds",
"-1 is a car going in reverse. Multiply it by -1 and it now must go in reverse of the reverse(forward). Think of -1 as not a number but it's own operation if it helps. By multiplying or dividing by -1 you really just reverse the original problem. Any negative number is really just positive but reversed with -1. \nOf course this probably isn't the true mathematical way but it might be easier to understand. \nTL;DR: -1 reverses numbers."
] |
The Veil of Ignorance | [
"The Veil of Ignorance is an idea that's been used by philosophers for centuries to handle certain types of questions. \n\nJohn Rawls, for example, used it to develop his theory of Justice and how to make a just society. His thought experiment goes like this:\n\nImagine you get to create society as you saw fit. BUT you have no idea where you'll be born into it. You wont know your race, your gender, whether your family is rich or poor. You don't know anything about your future life in this society. This is the veil of ignorance. Now, given the \"rules\" of the thought experiment, how should society be built?"
] |
why do so many different Rx and OTC drugs, with wildly different purposes, all cause drowsiness? | [
"A lot of different compounds in your brain and blood control sleep. (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, histamine, glutamate and acetylcholine) \nBig percentage of drugs affecting your body will also affect these compounds, which will end in drowsiness or hyperactivity, mood changes etc. \nFor example Dayquil contains DXM, a chemical that suppresses cough by sigma-1 receptor wizardry but also is a reuptake agent to dopamine and serotonin which are neurotransmitters making you drowsy and giving you hallucinations etc with higher doses."
] |
Why are abs shaped like little squares instead of being one large muscle? | [
"It's actually two muscles, one long one on each side (running top to bottom). What creates the indents is connective tissue. The muscles are called the rectus abdonimus and the connecting tissue is called linea alba.",
"The linea alba runs north and south. The horizontal indentations are formed by tendon-like borders of the various abdominal muscles intersecting with the linea alba. They're called aponeuroses."
] |
What is neoliberalism and what are people blaming it for? | [
"So /u/BtmnDetroisDeserves and /u/hoffmania explain the basics of it really well. I just want to expand on that a bit more in a way that's more tangible and... well, individualistic, since it's neoliberalism and shit. \n\nBy that I mean, neoliberalism is heavily centered around independent choice and work, or at least the illusion of it. \n\nThe Uber/Lyft controversy is pretty much the epitome of neoliberalism. The reason why it has faced so much backlash is because, for decades (perhaps even a century now), taxi and private car drivers have worked through unions and government negotiations to find the right balance among company profit, community benefit, and individual gain. In other words, theoretically up until now, being a taxi driver has been *somewhat* livable as a job in most regions. \n\nHowever, what Uber and Lyft are doing is shifting away from that worker infrastructure. They are avoiding individual insurance requirements, trying to dance around background checks, and cutting down both price and pay. \n\nNow, you can argue that in this economy, any money is good money and competition is fair. But that's the thing -- the reason why Uber and Lyft are so popular is because they're utilized by an increasingly thrifty population on the rider side, and an increasingly impoverished population on the driver side. So you're not only putting cab and car groups out of business, but you're also slowly bringing down expected quality of life for drivers that do stick around. \n\nThis is, meanwhile, all for the profit of the corporation -- Uber and Lyft don't give a shit about your well-being. ($200 clean-up fee? Bullshit.) But there's a fear that at this rate, Uber and Lyft will slowly phase out the smaller, more \"for-the-public\" cab and car companies and become the sole private company that the world relies on for private transportation. \n\nThat shift is at the core of neoliberalism: Illusion of freedom, centralization around private companies, and a corporate-heavy profit structure with an illusion of benefit. \n\nTake that and apply it to military, infrastructure, schooling, etc. as you will.",
"This is a difficult question to answer because neoliberalism has become a modern boogeyman for the left to blame things on without necessarily needing proof. Because of this, and because of the creation of \"neoliberal studies\", what it is has become a little ambiguous so I'll answer from a sort of historical perspective. \n\nNeoliberalism refers to the older strands of liberalism that are found in the writing of prominent philosophers like Adam Smith and John Locke. Certainly we recognize now that pure free markets and unfettered individual liberty and social obsession with property rights isn't suited now to be a progressive/liberal policy that respects all people because those kinds of things create inequalities. However, we have to understand the period they were writing in. The two I mentioned (and there are definitely other representatives of these ideas) were writing at the dawn of capitalism with a monarchical political structure that was beginning to loosen its grasp on the people so these particular theorists saw individual liberty best fulfilled through open markets and respect for property. \n\nFast forward to today. We no longer live in the dawn of capitalism and the conditions we live in (economically and socially) are radically different. But individualism and respect of rights is still vitally important just as it was to Locke and smith and their contemporaries. It's simply that modern liberals see the fulfillment of those ideals radically differently due to the radical difference in our material and social conditions (i.e. vast abundance of goods, globalization of the market, more tolerant society, etc). \n\nSo neoliberalism is just a reversion back to the original liberalism found in Smith and Locke and others which advocates for laissez-faire economic policies and a prioritization of individual liberties and rights (usually practiced through economic activity). For a much more in depth write up on this I whole-heartedly recommend \"Liberalism and Social Action\" which is a short book by John Dewey that goes over this historical history of liberalism.",
"I'm by no means an expert, but my more politically minded friends have spent an inordinate amount of time explaining this to me like I'm five.\n\nNeoliberalism is the idea that some measure of social hierarchy is good for society. Obviously, you're more likely to believe something like this if it puts you at the top of the social hierarchy, because that way you get to be more powerful than anyone else.\n\nThe typically neoliberal way to create this social hierarchy is to oppose labour unions and other laws or movements which will level the playing field. However, the problem with that is that it would normally create stronger opposition to neoliberalism, because the lower classes would see themselves as under attack and fight back.\n\nAs such, neoliberals are often accused of some insidious mind games, which they use to convince lower classes either that they would benefit from a social hierarchy or that it is impossible to create a society without a social hierarchy. One way to do this, as mentioned is to discredit labour movements by saying they create unnecessary bureaucracy or that they don't truly benefit workers. Another is to create workplaces with a lot of managers and sub-managers so that few of the workers are at the same level in the conpany (this makes them less likely to band together and oppose the level above them). Yet another is to have countries sign treaties and international agreements that promise not to level society -- that way, even if the lower classes elect a sympathetic government, the government is stuck.",
"Neoliberalism came along in the 80s, with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as emblematic proponents of the ideology. Neoliberals have more faith in the private sector than the public sector but are not libertarians since libertarians are generally uncomfortable with oligarchs (eli5: the super rich power elites) while neoliberals are a tad authoritarian. \n\nUnder neoliberalism, you see an erosion of unions, welfare systems, and an embracing of globalism and deregulation of private entities. Reagan and Thatcher are both known for very strongly opposing unions having \"too much\" power and Clinton (yes, contemporary democrats are neoliberals too) restricted welfare during his presidency.\n\nPresidents of both parties used to be more comfortable with government regulations. Nixon, as awful a person as he was, created the EPA. Bush helped weaken the EPA because his administration believed it was hirting businesses.\n\nNow, you're seeing a backlash against neoliberalism, especially on the left. Hillary is a very neoliberal candidate. Her economic policies are not remarkably different from the Bushes, Obama, or her husband's. She might even be a bit right of Reagan in many regards, but her struggles with Sanders have been in no small part due to the fact that neoliberalism is on the wane with a considerable portion of the population."
] |
Why are aliens portrayed as stronger and superior? | [
"The general thought I see it as: If an alien race has the technology to come to our planet, they are technologically advanced/superior to our own.\n\nBut, this isn't always 100% accurate: See War of the Worlds, where they are stopped not by humans, but by disease that we are immune to (or well, resistant to the point of not dying from).",
"A weak and inferior alien doesn't make for a very exciting story.",
"I don't know about you, but I think I could take ET, that little waddling M & M eater, in a fight. Unless he pulled out a ray gun, or zapped me with his glowing finger.",
"For fiction literature it's mostly due to simple story telling preference. That being said, most portrayals of aliens are about them arriving at earth, which pretty much guarantees they are technologically more advanced than we are.",
"It isn't always the case. If you've ever read the later Ender's Game books like Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, there are weaker and less technologically advanced aliens that humans study after having conquered some of the galaxy.",
"Aliens who are able to travel across the galaxy is so much more technology advanced that us that comparing us to them would be like comparing humans to ants."
] |
How did the first STD's originate? | [
"The fact people are born virgins doesn't matter, it's what happens after they have sex. Probably the first STD was transmitted by some other means AND could be transferred sexually. If there were 1000 strains of a virus and one could be transmitted two ways instead of one, that strain would have an advantage. Even if it started off as being relatively hard way to get transmitted, eventually at least one strain of at least one disease would mutate to get better at getting transmitted sexually.\n\nThe thing to remember about evolution is the huge numbers involved. Of the thousands (millions?) of diseases, only a few evolve to be sexually transmitted. Of the thousands (millions?) of strains of STDs, only a few evolve to be really effective STDs. But with each generation (millions) the \"best\" strain gets improved upon. That modern AIDS virus, for instance, is truly standing on the shoulders of giants.",
"Evolution.\n\nIt's how any disease starts. A virus will mutate to be more effectively when transmitted sexually or while in the genital area or something like that.",
"An STD is just a type of disease. It's any disease that can be transmitted sexually. There is a lot of overlap between the list of STDs and bloodbourne diseases because, well, when you're all kinds of close, you tend to share trace amounts of blood."
] |
Why do only some Amazon prices show the price per volume? | example: $15.00 ($3.75/ounce) | [
"I don't know for sure, but I'd assume it has to do with what the sellers input on the item is. \n\nI know that's the same way with items that are sold in bulk quantities, they'll list the individual price rather than the price per lot, so you can buy them for 10¢ each, if you buy 200. \n\nThat said I'm not an Amazon expert.",
"Some things are sold by how much the customer needs, so you can easily get the amount needed. Others however are like actual stores with specific containers and seer amounts."
] |
to a European why so many Americans value the founding father's opinions and views over anything else? It seems in America, the "founding fathers" opinions are viewed as the sole acceptable opinion by many when there must be many others intelligent enough born after the "founding fathers" | [
"The founding fathers were some of the best educated thinkers of their generation. They actually wrote the constitution with checks in mind to prevent future authoritarian leadership (such as a monarchy). They also knew the future was going to be different but wanted to assure principle freedoms to all persons. They allowed the constitution to change through amendments and such to adapt. \n\nAnd yes, that has happened and there were smarter people - and we've added their ideas to our government as time went by. Social security, welfare, woman's suffrage, emancipation, etc. \n\nListening to the founding fathers therefore ends up being 'timeless'. Their ideas are humanistic by nature.",
"The issue relates to the \"meaning\" behind the words of the Constitution.\n\nThe \"original interpretation\", what u/diwij is referencing, examines the words through an examination of the intent of the writers and states at the time through examination of letters, speeches, and documents of the writers and states at the time when they wrote about the principals behind the language used at the time.\n\nExample:\n\nThe 2nd Amendment:\n\n > \"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.\"\n\nA modern leftist interpretation is that only members of a state-run, organized militia have a right to own and carry firearms because of the phrasing and the word usage.\n\nHowever, when examined with writings from Thomas Jefferson and others of the time, it is clear that the 2nd Amendment is meant to empower individuals to own arms. George Mason, one of the \"fathers of the Bill of Rights\" (along with James Madison) said \"Who is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.\" The meaning of the 2nd Amendment should be clear.\n\nBut even with this, the counter argument, \"But the writers couldn't have envisioned [modern weapons]\".\n\nThis is, frankly, a dumb argument as there are many things the writers couldn't have envisioned (like the internet, phones, TV, etc.) and yet such people would say the 1rst Amendment protections apply to these methods of communication; citing an \"original argument\" that the freedom of speech is protected regardless of the method through which that speech takes place.\n\nThe reason why the original position view is important is that freedom is a natural right not attached to an object, but to a person and the Constitution and Bill of Rights are concerned with these natural rights and not the mechanism of their expression.\n\nOr, to bring it back to the example:\n\nIf \"freedom of expression\" (1A) applies to phones, if the prohibition against unreasonable search & seizure and need for a warrant applies to cars (4A), then the private ownership of firearms applies to any and all modern firearms (2A) as the rights behind the Amendments are not vested in the objects, but are inherent to your humanity.",
"You're overstating the case a bit. Yes, \"the founding fathers thought...\" is something that gets argued quite often, but it's one of those things that gets used when it's convenient to a particular argument but not otherwise (similar vein: \"states rights\"). In other words, people usually use it as a post-hoc justification rather than a way of forming their opinion, except possibly in interpreting constitutional language, in the same way the motivation behind the drafting of any legal language gets taken into account. Also, the founding fathers didn't agree on everything, so it's possible to argue two sides of the same issue relying on them.\n\n > Surely men born 300 years ago couldn't have written rules about everything in the modern age?\n\nOnly extremists would think that. For example, most people agree that slavery was wrong, women and racial minorities should get the right to vote, poll taxes shouldn't be allowed, or any number of things that have been worked into the Constitution through amendments since the founding.",
"It's mostly to do with interpreting the Constitution. Many people believe that the original intent of the authors of the Constitution is an important (or the most important) consideration.",
"You're generalizing a lot.\n\nSome Americans idolize the founders and some don't. In general we have extreme respect for the men and the fundamental values of the nation they created.\n\nWe also, however, are aware that they were wealthy, white, landed, slave owning products of the 18th century. They and the documents they drafted must be considered in the context of their time when considering the future path the United States should take.",
"We don't (all) worship the founding fathers, but most of us do respect the writings of these men because so much of it is very profound. They were all philosophers of a sort.\n\nNo, they didn't write rules to address every eventuality. But that was part of their genius. With a few exceptions, the writings that are quoted are about principles, and those can still be applied today. The U.S. constitution is actually very brief, unlike for example the EU constitution. Also unlike the EU constitution, it hasn't been changed very often, and it's difficult to do. The EU's constitution gets changed radically and relatively easily. Joining the EU is like signing a blank check, because the union can just take more sovereignty from member nations, more sovereignty than the nations were planning to give up. \n\nThe US constitution is a masterpiece. The idea to have three independent branches of government that each curtail the powers of the other two was new and ingenious. Our government does not always work well (like now), but at least it's not because congress can do whatever it wants unchecked. (The UK only six years ago instituted a court that can check Parliament's power.)\n\nI won't say the constitution is perfect - from the inclusion of slavery to the apparently constitutional idea that money equals free speech, it has needed and does need improvement. But the structure it establishes is sound, and was original to or founders. They drew on many different sources, but they synthesized something new. \n\nJust because someone lived a long time ago doesn't mean their wisdom is not valuable today. People still quote from The Art of War, right?",
"Because the founding fathers knew scumbag politicians would fuck us over.\n\n\n\n\nCorrupt politicians and their lunatic power hungry supporters are the people who want the founding father concepts erased.",
"> when there must be many others intelligent enough born after\n\nThere are different types of intelligence. The Founding Fathers' intelligence was shaped in an economic and political climate where they were profoundly exploited and oppressed by tyrrany (and where they, themselves, profoundly exploited and oppressed others — that aside) —\n\nThey wrote a roadmap that has demonstrated to stabilise and unify disparate political objectives, as well as establish a framework to deliver justice and prosperity, and escape that exploitation and oppression (often ridiculously slowly, but nevertheless, it continues).\n\nThe idea that a government should be *minimalist*, not merely *limited*, in scope and powers, was and still is a difficult idea to capture, and provides a target whereby people should be able to live as free as they wish, without harming others, and without the government having to nanny them. That was then, is now, and always will be an ideal state.\n\nThere are often many popular politicians without that particular genius, without the ability to merely prune and refrain from un-necessary actions. The Founding Fathers weren't politicians — they were many things, but they were forced to be politicians. Today's politicians are never by necessity, and are usually politicians by privilege.\n\nIf you hear a politician state that \"It's an honour to be selected …\" — sigh deeply, shake your head and hope for the best.\n\nThe Founding Fathers are more like Russell Brand, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk — than they are Obama, Antonin Scalia, the GOP and Democratic leadership.",
"Two reasons.\n\nIt comes down to if you believe we ought to be a nation of laws, the laws cease to have real meaning if they are not enforced/interpreted in accordance with their authorial intent, this is especially the case because America is a constitutional democracy not one of common law. We also have a system of amendments which is the proper way to address fundamental legal issues.\n\nI'm a conservative so I am biased here but so are liberals just the other way. \n\nIt is important that America have a set of core values or tradions. That there is continuity to upholding an American way of life. That doesn't mean that our understanding of these concepts don't evolve (take voting, first it was only white male property owners, then white males, then males/women depending on the state, now it is everybody). \n\nHowever evolving doesn't mean we turn our backs on principles like individualism, states rights, a minimally intrusive government, respect for private property. \n\nLiberals tend not to care if something is \"American\", and Europe doesn't have the same type of patriotism for the most part as part of their culture.",
"It's the American problem. Our country has a finite time of development, with a definite (arguably) beginning. The same constitution that runs the place now was put in place 200-some-odd years ago. Thus, whenever someone--conservative, liberal, anarchist, whatever--is angry about what is going on, it is easy to say \"that's not what this place was meant to be!\" Because we have a document, written and signed, that says what we're \"supposed to be.\"\n\nOf course, like any text, it's all up to interpretation.\n\nThis is different than many places, such as Europe, where the history of civilization stretches back into mythological times. All across Europe, governments have come and gone over millennia. Wars have been fought, countries conquered and liberated. But the U.S. government, in a basic understanding, still exists in the same iteration founded in 1789. There have been no \"new\" governments established since then.\n\nSo no matter what goes on, there is always this nagging voice, an obligation to consider that we're still running the same game/experiment that was started back then. At face value it's silly considering that it doesn't really matter what the Founding Fathers thought--they're all dead and they'd never conceptualized the future we live in--but when you talk about stuff like civil rights, liberty, democracy, etc., especially when it comes to the government they founded, it makes sense to consult the great philosophers.",
"Because the founding fathers helped make this country and bring it together.\nThere are others that are more intelligent, but, we're not talking about intelligence, we're talking about a lot of different things. Like the integrity and ability to stand up against all odds to keep this nation going. \nYou can put together a nuclear reactor, but so can any other smart person. it takes \"leaders\" to keep our world running.",
"> I'm european and I don't understand American fascination with the \"founding fathers\" views. \n\nBecause they came up with the idea for what America is supposed to be. This is *supposed* to be a place where we have the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The Founding Fathers conceived of a place where the tired, the poor, the huddled masses could come and change their lives with hard work. Many people still believe in the American Dream. \n\n > Surely men born 300 years ago couldn't have written rules about everything in the modern age? \n\nThat's why the Constitution is a living document that can be changed to suit the times. \n\n > Furthemore, the world has changed its views on many things that were seen as correct before. \n\nSee above. \n\n > Why the insistence on listening to the \"founding fathers\" and ignoring every other person's views? \n\nAre there any of their views that are still followed that you feel are outdated and need to be changed?",
"Unlike most countries, when the US was formed, we couldn't attach ourselves to the lineage of those that came before us because our forefathers were European, and we were deliberately breaking away. So we had to establish American heroes and legends to hang our hats on. So, we made the founders of our country our heroes. It's also why we put George Washington on such a pedestal. I mean, sure, he actually was legit a great president. But we needed heroes and symbols quickly.\n\nAlso, the funny thing about us asking \"what would the founding fathers think about ____\" questions are actually pointless. They were just as divided as we are today. Some of them wanted an American monarchy and make George Washington our first king. Others wanted to have America be a confederation of each of the 13 states being it's own autonomous country (see The Confederate Papers). They weren't nearly as monolithic as people like to think they were.",
"They don't. Notice how the same people who hide behind the alleged opinions of the Founding Fathers:\n\n1: Won't change their stance on an issue when presented with unambiguous evidence that the Founding Fathers in fact believed the opposite of what they thought.\n\n2: Will deliberately misrepresent what said Founding Fathers thought.",
"They, and the Constitution, are what binds us Americans together. We don't have a national religion, no Royal Family, no King or Queen, a mix of cultural identities melting together, we're a mixing pot with the ideas of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution binding us all together.",
"America lacking a common racial or cultural legacy has only a political ideology to tie us all together. Thus the narrative of early America is the common thread by which we call ourselves Americans. The funny thing is how differently this interpreted and the issue polarized."
] |
If I light a candle in my dark bathroom and put it in front of a mirror does that double the amount of light in the room or does it stay the same? | [
"I know this is marked as Explained, but I just want to expand on this.\n\nThe amount of light in the room doesn't necessarily double. It depends on what you had before where the mirror is now.\n\nSay you had a wall painted black before. The black wall would absorb a good portion of the light, and the room would still be fairly dark. Place a mirror there, and the light is reflected back into the room instead of absorbed. In this case, a mirror would significantly brighten the room.\n\nComparing a pure white wall to the mirror: they reflect about the same amount of light, relatively. The mirror just reflects the light directly back, in the same pattern as the light entered the mirror, while a white wall spreads out the light and reflects it differently. The difference between the light in your bathroom if you had white walls, or if you had mirrors, is minimal, and depends on the type of mirror, paint, and surface of the wall.",
"The amount of light is the same, just the way it spreads out changes",
"Nice question. I'm thinking that the net light would stay the same, but because light would not be absorbed into the space where the mirror is, it would appear that there was more light. Kind of like a headlight seeming brighter than it would if it weren't encased in a parabolic mirror."
] |
How can reddit have such severe and constant server issues over a long period of time when all content hosted on the site is text-based? | [
"A metric assload of traffic that surges every now and then. A metric assload of people upvoting and downvoting and commenting, resulting in constantly changing pages that makes caching comment pages pretty much impossible. Every user not only seeing the default subreddits has a customized front page.\n\nThe site gets billions of page views a month. It's a lot to keep up with."
] |
Why is there so much gang raping in India? | [
"* India is a huge country with a population of 1.2 billion (some perspective: South America - 387.5 million people, North America - 528.7 million, Europe - 739.2 million, Africa - 1.03 billion). If you don't think in the per capita terms, you will find India leading on many fronts.\n\n* India is not a developed country - it suffers from a huge law and order problem, especially in the rural areas, compounded by rapid migration to the urban areas. The brutal rapes (or other crimes) and the police apathy are not unique to India, but unlike many other developing or underdeveloped countries, India has highly pervasive English media, which makes it easier for the international media to pick up stories.\n\n* With increasing literacy and awareness, the women are now making a noise about the unfair treatment being meted out to them in the Indian society. The citizens (including males) are now openly discussing these problems. The countries that are developed today underwent a similar transformation a few decades back.\n\n* The 2012 gang-rape protests brought limelight on rapes in India, and since then, such stories have been given prominence on both news outlets and social media. Similar brutal incidents in other countries don't receive equal coverage. So, for example the story of Celeste Fronsman who was raped and burnt to death last year, wasn't covered prominently on reddit. It's same with recent raped-and-burnt cases from California, Greece, Ukraine, Canada or UK.\n\n* People love to stereotype other groups. So, the stories about the rapes of 4-month old, 5-month old, 6-month old, 10-month old or 18-month old babies - all by White people in US - don't get posted on reddit. And if they do, the comments read something like \"What an asshole\" or \"This sick puppy needs to be killed\", not something like \"White people have a culture problem\" or \"America is such a shithole\".\n\n\n\n[more on this TrueAskReddit thread](_URL_0_)",
"I posted this recently in r/India, and I'm reposting it here.\nThe title of my post was:\n\"I'm sick of the 'but rape happens everywhere' response to the way women are treated in India\"\n\nEvery once in awhile, one of the daily stories about rape in India gets shared on an international news site including reddit. And inevitably, the \"PC\" high and mighty comments begin. \"But the US has more rapes per capita\" \"The media just loves to sensationalize Indian rape stories since that one horrible gang rape incident last year.\" And my personal favorite, \"rape is a world problem, not an Indian problem.\"\n\nYes, rape is a world problem. I was almost raped at a summer camp in New Hampshire when I was 13. But I have lived in several US cities and a town in Spain and have spent time in 30+ European, Asian, North American, and Central American cities. And after living in Delhi for the last 1.5 years, let me tell you: Rape is a HUGE problem in India.\n\nTo those people who like the \"but the US (or another country) has a higher rape per capita\" argument...do you have any idea how under-reported rape (or any crime for that matter) is in a country like India? Under-reported doesn't mean a few cases get slipped under the rug every now and then. Under-reported means that most people, especially lower-class people, would rather not tell anyone if they have been sexually assaulted because of the unlikelihood that a person of authority will do anything about it or be \"on the victim's side\" in the matter. People also don't tell because of the cultural shame that goes along with it.\nI agree with you that rape happens everywhere. But you know what doesn't happen everywhere? Government officials telling the offender \"well if you marry her, there won't be any charges.\" Women killing themselves after being raped to \"preserve their husband's honor.\" And if you want to believe that these are just sensationalized stories and not things that actually happen, then fine. Go ahead.\n\nBut please explain to me how it's okay to not feel safe in a major, international city after 9pm. Explain to me why every time I am out, I hear Indian male friends telling Indian female friends who are leaving \"please make sure you text me the license plate of your cab/auto rickshaw.\" Explain to me the frequent stories I hear from my Indian female friends about being followed, groped, harassed, etc. Explain to me why at a religious festival at a historical monument, I walked past a huge crowd of men on my way out and 15 or so of them thought it was perfectly okay to painfully grab my boobs as I walked by.\n\nOr just explain the daily stares and crude comments. And yes, I know that stuff happens all over the world. But here in India, that kind of behavior is accepted and often encouraged.\n\nI don't often post publicly about my experiences being a woman in India. Whenever I see other foreigners speak out, western countries usually bash them for not being \"culturally sensitive\" or wearing the wrong clothes or whatever. (Since I know clothing seems to be a big factor to some people when discussing rape, I'll have you know that every time I've personally experienced sexual harassment in India, I was wearing conservative Indian clothing, even though this really shouldn't be a factor in this conversation). And this isn't about ME, this is about what I see happening every day to women in India, Indian or any other nationality.\n\nI read a New York Times article today that perhaps said it best.\n\"But the biggest challenge, Indira Jaising, additional solicitor general, told India Ink, was changing the patriarchal and chauvinistic mindset of judges, legislators and police officials who see verbal harassment as just a bit of fun and dismiss stalking as “boys will be boys.”\" _URL_1_\nThere are many things I love about living in Delhi. This is not one of them.\nIf we want to fix this problem, we first need to accept that it is a problem!\n\nPS I wrote this after seeing an article shared on FB about yet another little girl being raped and then reading people's comments. \"Please stop encouraging the media sensationalizing of rape in India. Rape happens all over the world. There are more rapes in the US than in India.\" Every time people post articles about rape in India, I see these kind of comments (especially on reddit)\n\nEDIT: \n\nThank you for all your responses and the gold. I was really scared to post this because last time I posted it in r/India, I got got downvoted so much I had negative karma and received really angry messages. And I received a lot links to news stories about rape in the US of course...\n\nI know I didn't do a good job of explaining WHY. I just wanted to comment on my experience. I think the reason WHY is a mix of a bunch of complicated issues. After reading all the posts in this thread, I think @Ande_Ka_Funda 1 really summed up a lot of it. I've done some work in schools in rural villages and it is true that often there is no interaction between boys and girls. Once I was doing an activity, and it was impossible to get everyone to hold hands in a circle because no one wanted to be the person holding the other gender's hand. So yes, imagine these boys growing up and then moving to a city like Delhi and seeing girls interacting freely with other men and feeling raging jealousy. Just imagine that for a minute. You are barely allowed to look at a girl and all you have your fantasies and desires. And then you see girls and boys holding hands on the streets or getting cozy in a bar or something. And if YOU try to talk to a girl, they look down on you in disgust. And like @Ande_Ka_Funda 1 said, imagine if your friends experience this same thing...\n\nSo there's this + apathetic law enforcement... I think the NY Times article I referenced has some good points...that often this behavior is \"acceptable.\" \n\nMany people are working towards fixing this problem, but unfortunately, many solutions further separate men and women (i.e. women-only subway cars and women-only banks). And then there's the law that basically puts a woman's word against a man's. This is supposed to help with law enforcement against rape but obviously causes more resentment. I think solutions need to bring men and women together, so more men can feel comfortable with women and see them as equals. This has to start in childhood, and it will take time. In the meantime, the law-enforcement needs to improve.\n\nWe happen to be talking about rape here in this thread but let me also say that after living in India for the last 1.5 years, I want you to know that I love this country. I am choosing to live here right now after all...\nThere is good and bad in every place. I have met some of the most incredible people here and seen some of the most innovative ideas. Rape is a problem in India just like any other problem in any other country. It of course does not \"define\" India. But we need to recognize that it is a problem and continue to work towards fixing it.",
"There is definitely a cultural element to the rape/gang rape epidemic in India. I am an Indian woman, but moved to the US many many years ago. However, I still visit every year and have tons of family back home. The following observations are my experiences having lived in both countries.\n\n1. Non-existent concept of consent: People in general, and men in particular in India can't seem to grasp the idea of consent. A woman saying no, or standing up to herself was almost unheard of until recently. Like a posted who commented earlier, if a man fancies a particular woman and wants to be with her, she better say yes or she will be harassed, stalked or even raped until she gets the point.\n\n2. Women are still considered property: This is probably the most frustrating part of the culture imho. Parents think they \"own\" their daughters and expect them to abide by their rules while sons get a pass, husbands think they \"own\" their wives etc. The same attitude is pervasive among the poorer, uneducated men who cannot get a woman on their own and decide to claim their \"property,\" i.e., a woman of their choice.\n\n3. Nun/Whore complex: Many Indians still subscribe to this mode of thinking. A chaste, pure, unsullied traditional woman is a nun and a woman who is even remotely western i.e., wear pants, drink, smoke, have male friends, be assertive, go out to clubs or bars, have boyfriends etc are whores, and whores must be taught a lesson. In this case, lesson = rape to assert their dominance over these women and show them that their \"lifestyle\" is wrong.\n\n4. Piss poor male upbringing: This is going to an unpopular opinion among Indians at least, but most men are raised to do whatever they want. It happens everywhere in varying degrees in India, among the poor, middle class and rich. Men get unlimited freedom to anything, even the \"western\" things, usually never face repercussions for their actions, and worse, are told that the way they treat women is just fine. Your son harassed a girl at school? well she was being a slut, asking for it etc. When you are told all your life that you can do no wrong, and even if it's wrong, you can get away with it, well it's all fair game.\n\n5. Women on women hatred: For some inexplicable reason, women treat other women in India horribly. Mothers treat daughters like shit, mothers-in-law control and dominate their daughters-in-law, female neighbors and family members gossip about and try to fuck up things (like marriages, jobs etc) for other women, most dowry deaths are perpetrated by the mother-in-law and sisters-in-law of a bride, rape victim blaming/shaming is usually exacerbated by women and so on. Until women start respecting other women, it will be difficult to expect that attitudes among men can even begin to change.",
"Most of the rapist / gang rapist comes from poor or lower middle ground background. And that's the majority in this country .To understand why those men do it, let's have a look at their lives .\n\nMost likely he's been schooled in a government or a lower level schools. Interaction between boys and girls are never encouraged in such places (Source : Me, Standard 1 -12 in in 4 different Kendriya Vidyalayas, the finest government school in the country) .In-fact, in some cases it is discouraged. And not only in schools, even in (few) [colleges such behavior is frowned upon](_URL_2_). (Case in point: Different staircases from boys and girls) . So much so, that for causing indiscipline he has to sit with a girl for one period, as a punishment. (No I'm not kidding) .\n\nBack home, he'll hangout with his guy buddies, rarely interacting with the opposite gender. Why? Because the parents of girls in his neighborhood would strictly forbid their daughters to play with any guy of their age.\n\nThe only female he would be close is his mother. He'll generalize all the other women based on her . She's probably the only female role model he had growing up. Again, in many of households like this the male (his father) would be the ultimate authority in home. His words are final and he literally is the king of home. If the father slaps his mother, she wouldn't fight back. She would cry silent tears away from everyone.\nIn the boy's mind a picture has been formed. It is this: The man owns the woman. He's seen his father abuse and mistreat his mother, but has rarely seen her fight back. According to him, the man owns the woman.\n\nNow he's in college , away from home for the first time. He's independent and he has hit puberty. He goes out on the street and sees happy couples holding hands and walking smilingly . He would also like to have a girlfriend .\n\nBut the reality is that , he has never even talked to a girl. He does not know how to approach them . He can't even ask directions from a young girl. He does not have the courage or any experience with the opposite sex.\n\nMaybe he tried talking to few girls from class, maybe he did not. Even if he did, things would not go beyond casual friendship. In some cases, girls would reject him of friendship too(he does smell of desperation after all).\n\nBeing a lonely loser, he's only accepted in a group of lonely loser.\n\nHe's growing up and he's becoming aware of the fact that people of his age are having sex. In movies, the couples are having sex. In the bollywood songs, the girls is seducing the guy with double meaning words. Girls are throwing themselves over other guys and here he is, masturbating every night .\nHe's getting desperate for sex and he's getting frustrated by the lack of sex in his life.\n\nBasically it boils down to the following facts: \n1) Never having interacted with women throughout his life, he can not picture them as another person. It's an unknown species. \n2) All around him, the media and movies portrays women as sex objects. And that's what he thinks women are good for. \n3) As a man, he thinks he should own women. Own them and then have sex with them. \n4) He's getting desperate for sex.\nWhen it hits the tipping point, he literally owns the women and have sex with them.\n\nAnd that's why men rape here.\n\nAs far as gang rapes go, the fact that all his friends are of the same mentality and he probably does not have the courage to rape a woman alone. So he gangs up with his friends and be a partner in crime.",
"You should check out the UN's recent study that surveyed men in South Asia and why they commit sexual violence. Though the study doesn't include India, it includes many surrounding SE Asian countries and the reasons for raping are interesting (such as feeling entitled to womens' bodies, not having learned what consent is, etc).\n\nDetails on the UN study: _URL_3_",
"* 1.3 billion people live in India, as much as the average continent. Many people equals many incidents. \n\n* India is very culturally diverse, in many cultures in India the interaction between men and women is limited. In many parts women stay in doors and you mostly see men in the streets. Women get VERY little respect in most parts\n\n* because of infanticide and abortions India has more men then women. \n\n* India has lots of poverty, poor males have a hard time finding a partner and become sexually frustrated.",
"I know that sex and casual dating before marriage isn't prevalent. During my visit, the group of guys I befriended were all virgins and asked me what it's like to kiss a girl. \n\nThey were 22 and 23 years old and not unusual from what I hear.",
"I would suggest that the ELI5 answer is: ignorance, sexism, a rise in female power, and backlash to that rise in power.\n\nWhat it's not about, IMO, is sexual frustration. There are too many instances of gang rapes using foreign objects, rapes involving infants, etc, to even entertain the idea that it's a purely sexual issue. Secondly, rape is fairly well documented as a power issue, rather than a sexual issue; Michael Kimmel writes fairly eloquently on this subject.\n\nThe longer synopsis of what's happening in India, IMO, is this:\nYou have a culture that sees women as both untouchable, and yet lesser than men; they traditional take a submissive, uneducated role in life. This is now changing, and more Indian women are choosing to pursue education and status. This is particularly affronting to lower-class, uneducated men, who have had no schooling to help feed an educated, empathetic opinion of women. You now have a class of men who see women as needing to be \"put in their place,\" and they are actively carrying that out in a terrorist/vigilante fashion, performing public degradation and destruction of women to cow the others into fearfully retreating to their former role.\n\nAre the men aware that this is what they're doing? Not necessarily; some of it's knee-jerk, unconscious reaction--I'm not taking away their guilt for the crimes by any stretch, here, just pointing out that they may not be able to articulate \"why\" they're doing what they're doing.\n\nI actually wrote an article on this subject not that long ago, when some Huffington Post writer claimed we have a \"Rape Culture\" in North America. My response explains the difference between what's going on in India, and what happens here, and why they are simply incomparable. If you're interested, you can find it here: _URL_4_\n\nSorry this isn't more ELI5ish, but really, this is not something that can necessarily be explained to a 5yo, even ignoring how the subject matter might scar the hell out of them.",
"I watched an interesting documentary on Netflix recently- whore's glory. It was worth the time, but the part that struck out was this-\n\nOne segment dealt with Bangladesh. While obviously an extremely broad brush-stroke, it does share a good deal of similarities to India with regard to poverty level, development, and general demographic mindset (male-dominated). Anyways, they were interviewing some of the customers to these brothels and one of the guys made a crazy point when asked why the local government doesn't step in to shut the area/industry down- Paraphrasing, he said- the police and government need the district. Otherwise, if you do not give the men a place to fuck, the men will take their urge upon the unwilling. Women, goats, sheep- it doesn't matter. Men here are going to have sex. The district allows that to happen safely. We may have a problem with prostitution, but we will never have a problem with rape.\n\nI know this doesn't really answer the question as to why, but I did think it was a salient and semi-relevent point. Men are put into positions of superiority over women, and stuff like this is going to happen.",
"I've struggled with this issue a lot recently. I'm Indian by birth and race, but I grew up in the West (Australia/New Zealand, since I was 3, I'm 21 now).\nPart of me will always be Indian, and it's that part of me which I'm sad to say is ashamed of the country. There is undoubtedly a systemic problem of sexual assault and rape in India, stemming from a number of factors, such as mind-boggling gender inequality, and the sexual repression of an entire culture, massive amounts of corruption, poverty, etc. There's absolutely no use in saying that other countries have these issues too - that does not diminish the problem in India one bit. If anything, as ashamed as it makes me, I'm glad India is being put under scrutiny like this - if there isn't such outrage, then nothing will change.\n\nOn the gender inequality issue is where India is perhaps most like other countries. Gender inequality is nothing new nor specific to the culture (someone mentioned the Lily Ledbetter Act above, for example). However, it's definitely a big issue in India.\n\nThe sexual repression issue is an interesting one, which can really be attributed to a simple factor. The United States went through a Sexual Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and out of that revolution, the current society, where sex is accepted and not particularly a taboo subject, was formed organically. India, however, never went through the Sexual Revolution. Instead, what India had was a sexually repressed society that was all of a sudden inundated with Western media, media which was more open and accepting of sex. This change was not organic, and its resulted in a where men are constantly exposed to sexual ideas (porn and whatnot), and have no way of healthily expressing those ideas.\n\nCorruption, while it doesn't directly lead to a rape mentality, absolutely facilitates it. Like someone else mentioned, there is no real consequence of rape (though that is now rapidly changing). Getting rid of corruption is perhaps the best first step to take in order to address this issue, since it's much easier to change laws and control a certain group (in this case, law enforcement) than it is to change an entire cultural mindset. Luckily, there is some hope on that front, with the people finally standing up to corruption and actually affecting political change.\n\nPoverty is perhaps the biggest issue of them all. All of the above things can be seen in other countries, but the sheer disparity between the wealthy and the poor in India indicates a staggering level of poverty. This has a lot of knock-on effects, of course, such as lack of education in rural areas, etc, and all these significantly contribute to the rape issue in India.\n\nI'm not an expert on this by any means - I've merely outlined what I've observed, as both an Indian who has frequently visited India, and as (essentially) a Westerner. One thing is for certain though. The majority of Indian people have had enough. It's not all gloom and doom - there **will** be change, and it **will** happen sooner rather than later",
"\"rape is very rarely about sex and more about having power over another human\"\n\nI know we have heard this for decades now, but is this really true? Are we sure rape doesn't have to do more with wanting sex, rather than power over someone else?",
"Indian men are misogynistic to an extreme many in the West do not realize. Women have been second-class citizens treated almost like \"objects\" for so long that millions of Indian men actually do think that they are objects designed for men's pleasure. While this is not so different from many men in other cultures, including the West, Indian men seem to have the attitude that even violence against women is no big deal. \n\nAll the arguments about the size of India, changing attitudes, and so on do not account for the simple fact that men in India, and I am not talking about modern educated men for the most part, are often simply ruthlessly hostile to women and do not find even the horror of a gang rape unjustifiable. Of course this does happen elsewhere, even in the West, but it is not at all common. This class of Indian men seem to have made it into almost a regular phenomenon in India. \n\nThe argument that rape in the West is often not talked about is nonsense. It's a horrible crime, it is talked about, and you will go to prison if you commit the crime. And in India how much rape is not even talked about? I would imagine quite a bit. And we aren't talking about \"ordinary\" rape but horrific gang rape which seems to have become a regular feature of Indian society at its lower level, at least. \n\nIf a society denigrates women regularly and does not treat them as full human beings, and that clearly is true throughout all of Indian history, then they will think it is okay to brutalize them.",
"Why India?\n\ncultural Conservatism - India is a very conservative male dominant society, where women are easily objectified. Sex outside of marriage is considered highly taboo. This sexual repression of men finds an easy outlet on women who they consider 'immoral'. This culture of rape is often condoned by conservatives who question the woman's character, her clothes, her intentions etc. Blaming the victim. \n\nPoor law enforcement. With the quick urbanization of most Indian cities and the migration and resulting culture shock of the rural poor. India's archaic police system has not seen any reform in years. They are not equipped either with the sensitivity or the technology to deal with either the victims or the perpetrators.\n\nPopular Culture - As much as I would hate to blame pop-culture for instigating rape, I think it has played a role in this case. Almost all Bollywood films play to the trope of the-hard-to-get-girl who is hounded by the protagonist until she finally relents and falls in love (or does the nasty with him). You would be hard pressed to find any Indian movies where this trope is not played out in some form or the other. When you consider that most of the intended audience is a vast horde of uneducated, repressed, easily titillated men - there are bound to be consequences.",
"To be fair, I don't think I would even try to explain gang rape to a five year old.",
"Let's get a disclaimer out of the way.\n\nOther countries and cultures have rapes as well.\nOther countries have issues with women rights.\n\nI grew up in South Africa. I think it is the rape capital of the world. If it's not number 1, it is really high up there. I say this because if you are talking about it, most people are going to say something about black culture or black people in South Africa being the dominant part of that statistic.\n\nNow is there anything intrinsic about being black that contributes to rape? Of course not. But there are various social/economic/belief systems that raise the problem of rape within that group in South Africa. Many of these issues are not there in other societies or groups.\n\nIn a similar way, there are a variety of issues in India that bring about such cases.\n\n1. Women and men do not mix freely. This results in a highly sexualized view of women. Any women who has been to India will probably talk about the groping, cat calls... It really is taken to another level.\n\n2. People are property (to varying degrees). Women are regarded as property to varying degrees depending on religion and culture. People from poorer subsects are viewed as next to nothing. This means, you can use and abuse their men and their women. Generally more so the women. I have uncles in India who openly talk (in guy time) about screwing the servant girl. \n\n3. The legal system is crap.\n\n4. Women and men don't mix freely. This is one, but a different effect. You tend to get groups of men hanging around together. I don't care what culture you in, groups of young men are generally up to no good :P \n\n5. Family honor is there. Things are always covered up and people don't listen or talk about things. If you think about the Catholic church covered up molesting children for years... the same thing happens in Indian culture. People are afraid to speak up and report rape. People don't want to cause trouble and hurt someone's family or their honor... The police are probably tied to some family and they will take the side of the family first...\n\n6. Rural people moving to the cities tend to encounter more women and might not have changed their rural mindsets. This is part of it, but I don't like people excusing this thinking it's just the rural people. Rich urban indian rape all the time as well. Often times servant girls and lesser people. This is not unlike the sexual abuse that occurs in the gulf states.",
"India has a few inherent issues that contribute to this problem:\n\na) A huge population of young people who have loads of free time. Very few productive outlets exist for young people in general\n\nb) Extreme stigma against sex before marriage in Indian society (especially true for women). Sex isn't a topic that is discussed among family members for the most part. So young people are never exposed to healthy discussions regarding sex\n\nc) The ratio of male:female is heavily skewed towards males. This in combination with (b) leads to high levels of sexual frustration\n\nd) Patriarchal structure of Indian society. Women are considered below men and are supposed to be subservient. This is why women who outwardly reject these notions seem to be the most frequent target of these attacks.\n\nAdditionally, the media and women have started reporting this more of late and as some other people have mentioned on a per-capita basis it is not as bad as the media would lead you to believe",
"OP, thank you for opening a thread on this topic. The discussion is teaching me a lot. Some people would deliver this criticism by flaming you, so I hope you'll give me credit for at least being polite. That being said, I think the jokes you edited into your post are in poor taste in this particular context. We are talking about real women being brutalized. There are other forums for making those jokes, but right here it just looks to me like you are making fun of their plight. I'm sure that's not your intent, but it really looks like it.\n\nI'm happy to discuss this by PM since I don't want to derail the main thread. Cheers!",
"The attitude towards women because they are seen as inferior which is drummed into them from a young age and the lack of protection for women. They are told that the only life for them is to be a housewife and cater to what the man wants.\n\nThe problem with sex--india is a very close minded country when it comes to sex and generally women are seen as sex objects in india. Combining these attitudes gang rapes generally happen because males will see themselves as stronger and the woman will have to 'give' in to his demands because...the male is the better, more powerful gender.",
"As explained to me by a coworker the situation is as follows. In India sex out of wedlock is generally frowned upon, therefore it is hard to impossible for a bachelor to find someone to have consensual sex with. As a woman who has sex while unmarried will be considered a whore to her peers and family. Therefore rape has become an outlet for a the sexually frustrated male youth of the second largest country in the world. I'm not saying every Indian family has the same mentality, its just that these concepts are pervasive throughout the culture.",
"> *Good job* **Gang**! *You really* **banged** *off those answers* **and dominated** *this question*.\n\nSeriously OP?",
"India has one of the worst gender imbalances in the world due to female infanticide. Research shows that a society with a higher population of male youth correlates with higher incidences of violent crimes, particularly rape.\n\nSource: _URL_6_\n\n**world average gender ratio (2011, CIA)** : 1.07 males for every female\n\n**india's gender ratio (2011, CIA)**: 1.12 males for every female\n\nsource: _URL_5_\n\nthe other issue is that India is a sexually repressed country, to the point where it has become pathological. the rapid modernization of India is literally a sexual time bomb that is manifesting itself through rape.\n\nhere is a short note from NYT with links to more research papers - \n\n_URL_7_",
"A large majority of Indians are uneducated and poor. 68% of India lives on less than 2$ a day. This extreme poverty and competition for resources (on account of the large population) leaves many individuals significantly frustrated. Add to this social injustice, a flawed law and order system that favors the rich and powerful, a class system that the majority falls on the lower end of, and inhibitive cultural norms that repress sexual expression add to this frustration. Drugs are not as easily available in India, nor as widespread. Rape has become the equivalent of a fix. Men get a high doing this. They get a reprieve from the terrible frustration that is living poor in India. Of course, rape is horrible and can never be justified and if I could have my way, I'd penalize it with death. But the issues are far deeper and social. And fixing this needs beginning from the top. We need more education, more sexual equality instilled, better law and order, a better shot at justice for the common man, better media, better governance, harsher and quicker punishment. Indians as a whole are not pro-rape. Rape is what happens when fringe individuals are cramped by the system. They are at fault. And the system needs to take care of this. But unlike as noted in another post, it is not encouraged directly. Indians are all ashamed of what other Indians are doing. We wish we could give them the opportunities that have taught us this wrong is too wrong. But there are so many, that it's going to take time.",
"I know this is about India but I assume what I am about to explain happens there. I remember watching a video about Egypt when the riots were happening. There was a British or american female reporter (I dont recall) and as she is reporting the news in front of a lot of people, the men are literally just trying to grope her. And if you look into their eyes...its like they were robots. Emotionless look on their face..despite cameras shining on them they continued to just grope at her and someone had to step in and rush her out of there. If someone wants to find d the youtube link...I will try in a bit.\n\nAnyways...that shocked me. \n\nEDIT - found it (no sound) _URL_8_\n\nbut seriously, what the fuck?",
"Also, femicide is very prevalent in India. It's a common cultural practice to abort girls. Therefore, the gender ratio is extremely imbalanced (there are more girls in India that are aborted than are born in the States in a single year) - there are simply more men than women now. It's bad news to have a bunch of young single men in society - it's a recipe for aggression and violence, which we are seeing manifested in, among other ways, the phenomenon of gang rapes.\n\n_URL_9_\n\n_URL_10_\n\n_URL_11_\n\n_URL_12_",
"Well, it really depends on where you go. Generally it's worse in the poverty stricken parts of urban towns. Some of these rapes happen while the perpetrator is under the influence of a drug or alcohol.\nIt mostly occurs to poorer women because the corrupt ass police won't do shit. Now it rarely happens to wealthier women because unfortunately the police take it more seriously and investigate.",
"Get rid of your second edit. Your question is begging answers from assault survivors and their friends, and they deserve better than a crass joke made at their expense.",
"I spent few living years in India. I can tell you it is a VERY big problem in certain parts of India and it should be dealt with. Though if may add... I would say the whole idea of \"police turning a blind eye\" is very exaggerated. Yes, I admit India has a very corrupt police force and they don't have the best reputation. What is bad is the Indian Juridictional system, where you would have to wait for your case to get a hearing and finally a verdict. \n\nSecondly, I'm sorry OP I'm going to piss you off with this. Yes india has a problem with how it views women but so does many other countries. Especially the middle east; there have been number of cases when when women who were actually raped were jailed. \n\n_URL_14_\n\n_URL_13_\n\nI would like to conclude by answering your question... So why are there gang rapes in India? I believe it's the environment that these men have grown up in. According to me there are two sides to India. One which has a booming economy and westernised culture. One where the couples send their kids to private schools. And the other which is completely oposite. The group that the men who were convicted in the delhi gang rape. I think India needs to focus on this particular population and focus on educating them, improving the social enviornment these grow up in. Just to be clear, I am not saying that every rapist grew up in slums. I know rapes occur in the first part of india I mentioned but those men are just disgusting, like any other men in western society who commit this awful crime.",
"The only fact you need is that India has a population if 1.3 billion. When you consider that and look up per capita rates, it isnt much different than other countries.",
"\"Explain gang rape to me like i'm 5 years old\"",
"We shouldn't explain gang rape to 5 year olds...",
"I think this question currently has answers primarily acknowledging that women's safety and rape are huge issues in India, and that the level of patriarchy makes life difficult for women. This is true (I'm an Indian living in India). However, while the strong patriarchy is a major contributor to women's suffering, it may not be the primary reason for so many gang-rapes in particular. Stress on primary and gang-rapes in that sentence. There are 2 reasons I feel this:\n\n1) There are countries in the middle east which are as patriarchal as India without gang-rapes being such a ever-present danger, and women's safety being such a huge problem. Women's rights are curtailed in those countries - the law itself is biased - but women's physical safety on the streets exists\n2) It is understood in India that rape and especially gang-rape is a heinous crime. When (if) perpetrators are caught - and in all the big cases reported by media over the last year, they have been - they get tried and convicted for heinous crimes. Punishment is usually at the life imprisonment level.\n\nNow there's no real understanding of why there's this near epidemic of gang-rapes yet. I'm going to try and posit my own (evolving) theory, but it's not like I really know. First we have to understand - why specifically gang-rape, instead of rape.\n\nIn Western social theories there are two types of cultures - individualist (anglo-saxon countries predominantly) and collectivist (where the whole world is lazily bucketed). I think there's a mistake there. Classically collectivist countries are the East-Asian countries, where the whole - the community is treated as the unit that matters, the unit whose welfare counts. In Individualist societies, its the individual. In South Asia (and I'm sure many other countries in Africa, Middle-East elsewhere) it's actually Clannist (my own word). Essentially your 'clan' is the unit of measurement, the unit whose welfare counts. How you define your clan differs, but there is ALWAYS a clan in your head. It could be your friends circle + your family. It could be your village. It could be your caste people in your village/locality etc. But it's YOUR clan - meaning it's a sub-section of society that is specifically yours. And that's what counts. Going against your clan is wrong, but bending society's rules (if you can get away) is ok. Now this is not a declared system - a well-studied and accepted doctrine - but this is actually how most of us think and behave - though we will not think of it as our 'clan' just as 'we' and 'them'.\n\nThis is by no means an all-out bad system - it has a very big advantage which is that Indians almost always have a great, close circle of friends/family whatever to hang out with. Always. This means that whoever you are, even if you are a deprived (financially, emotionally, sexually) villager who has migrated to the city for any little shit job, you have a clan of others like you, probably from your same home locality and religion - and you spend all your time together. ALL YOUR TIME. This can make even the shittiest life a bit better. However, it also means that India is over-run by 'gangs of young men' - and they are ALWAYS in a gang, never alone. \n\nNow this sort of gang + high population density means that many kinds of street crime common elsewhere, like mugging, stealing are difficult to do in India - because everyone in your gang, and all the people invariably around you, have to agree/be comlicit. Otherwise they themselves will stop you (though they will never report you, that's being disloyal). So these crimes are quite rare (per capita) in India given the poverty, opportunity (since the govt hardly functions, and policing and courts are horrible ineffective).\n\nHowever, India is going through a slow-burn sexual transformation, unlike many Middle-Eastern patriarchies. So young men of all sections in India have sexual stimuli on TV, on the net etc. - enough to make them want all the goodies of a sexually open society - while having deep patriarchal protectiveness of the women of their 'clan'. So they want to protect their women, and the women of their clans want to protect their women - by 'protect', I mean to give them a good, 'normal' life which is their minds is that of a wife and mother, not a woman who sleeps around. So the girls in their societies are not sexually open - they are not allowed to, and they themselves very often do not want to risk their 'good, normal life'.\n\nSo you have a maelstrom of 4 things coming together:\n1) Men who are seeking sexual experiences, but a society that stops women in their own circles ('clans') from being sexually active - making millions of young men fiercely sexually deprived (while being the cause of their own deprivation through enforced patriarchy)\n2) A feeling that the rules apply only to your own clan - and that these other people - and other women - do not matter\n3) Mass migration of rural men to cities for menial labor where they are surrounded by 'other' people, 'other' women from outside their 'clan' while always having a gang of your own to make you feel brave and untouchable. It is important to note that other types of crime everyone in the gang might not agree too, but sexual aggression against women they might even dare each other to do since they are deprived men and these are 'other' women, not their own, so outside their duties of patriarchy.\n4) A government that is horribly ineffective at large-scale daily operations like policing so a feeling that it IS possible to get away with the crime\n\nThat is why this has become such a big problem, and such a difficult problem to solve. The reason Delhi is especially bad is simply opportunity - Delhi is the one city in India that has lots of open spaces, lower population density in large pockets, so any street crime feels easier to get away with in Delhi than Mumbai, Kolkata etc where there is most likely always someone outside your gang around.",
"There are plenty of reasons:\n\nSexual frustration: in the greatly patriarchal society of India, women looked upon as the \"honor\" of the family. You see it in everything - protecting male siblings, mothers, ppl from the neighborhood, movies, etc. It's THE culture.\n\nLack of interaction between genders : while the more affluent and those in metropolitan cities may have some interaction with the other gender, most don't. You see this in the large number of \"boys only\" or \"girls only\" schools. If you have ZERO interaction with girls, other than your sisters and cousins( also sisters) you don't really know how to interact with women. It only adds to point one able.\n\nIndian double standards: this is where it gets tricky and most Indians take offense. India has this weird dichotomy: we respect cows but don't really look after them (hence the stray cows grazing filth in towns & cities). We are respectful of our teachers and consider a teacher next to God, but think nothing of talking back, making comments and euphemisms, sniggering or \"bunking\" class. We are proud of bunking class. We respect and worship women in heavenly avatars but we cannot stop from groping or catcalling at any opp. \n\nMovies: the best heroes that show a \"typical\" Indian man is a brother, a son respectful to his parents and looks after them, buys them gifts. He also hangs out in a group \"eve teasing\" women....but he won't let anyone talk to his sister. He is there to defend his family's honor at every step. In a society closed till 1991,.movies have had an impact bigger than anything and anywhere else. \n\nPerceptions: a combination of above results in the thinking that any girl that's not Indian (aka Western) is loose, easy and \"up for it\". Any woman (Indian or not) who is not dressed conservatively is also loose and a fair target.\n\nCowardice: an Indian in a group (gang) is an aggressive Indian. Remove him from the group and he will struggle to even talk to a girl. When was the last time you saw an aggressive software engineer from India?",
"The vast majority of rapes happen in the North, where, because of the social construct and patriarchal mindset, families prefer to have male children instead of female children. Many families in fact kill their female children (its a very serious problem in North India) and this leads to a seriously skewed up sex ratio among the youth.\n\nThis skewed up sex ratio eventually leads to many boys not being able to find sexual partners or even women spouses, leading to a whole lot of sexual frustration. Add this to the way Indian society represses sexual expression (couples sitting in parks are often ridiculed/harassed by the police) and the way Bollywood makes women seem like objects of desire rather than actual humans and you get these men venting out their sexual frustration against women via rape or sexual harassment.",
"If anyone is giving straight answers here, India, like China has a cultural bias in favor of male children.Girl babies are left to die(Source: US friend adopted Indian babies. Many more girls abandoned than boys). That leaves a numerical discrepancy so that there are fewer legitimate partners for men . At the same time, the cultural devaluation of women puts them at physical risk.\n\nTL;DR? Too many men, not enough women, women devalued anyway, therefore(?) multiple men raping a single female.\nAny comments on this theory?",
"As a country with a massive gulf between income groups, a firm grounding in superstitious beliefs and a huge tendency towards reactionary hatred of womens' equality; it seems inevitable that such things would happen. India has a huge amount of problems stemming from this trifecta of social ills, and this is but one of them.",
"Per capita it's about the same as any where else in the world. But there media like to hype it up. Since India has 4x the population of the US the raw amount of rapes are higher, but as mentioned before, the per capita rate is the same.",
"Great thread! I'm not racist, but I am automatically reading these responses in an Indian accent :) I love India but I can attest that sexual culture India and all of the Middle East needs to be heavily reformed for the 21st century",
"**This isn't addressed at one particular comment**, but I'm just curious as to how many of the people answering this question have actually been to India and immersed in the culture (ie not staying in the Taj and going shopping and sight-seeing everyday)??",
"Its simply on the news, I bet the world would hurl if they saw what goes on in the black communities here in the US, from pedophilia to their own mass murderers etc.",
"Regarding india: A new case is reported every 20 minutes, Although the latest estimate suggest a new case every 22 minutes [source](_URL_15_)",
"It actually is occurring at a similar rate in other countries including the US.",
"Glad you asked! Five year olds be wonderin' this everywhere.",
"So I have seen a LOT of insight from people from India about why this happens. A lot of it seems to stem from sexual oppression and a culture that views women as property. I work for a company that outsources most of its IT to India, and we have lots of people from India on site. I am a woman and have never had issues with them (mostly men) but I was wondering....do the men who get jobs with American companies in India do some sort of coaching beforehand to help them work better alongside women? I know that most men there cannot be total misogynistic monsters, but I see overwhelming feedback that this is just how things are there....",
"There a misconception about these gang rapes\nBut without spending hours writing a response. Indian culture does not i clude having house psrties where random girls show up get drunk and 10 guys rape her while shes passed out. So in india the rapists are forced to make private buses look like normal public busses to get women to get on board. That being said i dont think indian men are more likely to rape but the police are not protecting women so these sick men are going about their business with little resistence.",
"I wonder if it has to do with the strong divisions that stem from the historical caste system, because a lot of the perpetrators tend to come from lower classes. I know that the caste system is formally abolished by law, but I can imagine that a lot of communities still follow it subconsciously. Since rape is often as much about having power as it is about sexual release, maybe it's a way for lower class males to assert the power that they subconsciously lack due to the caste restrictions?",
"The answer of all \"wordsmiths\" here with multiple reasons is quite illogical. Its a problem in India because the Law is not strong enough to stop it. The same problem happens in all the places where the law is fair and strong. \nSomebody even pulled out Kamasutra out of their ass! \nStatistics are strange too - if you consider unreported rapes you should also offset the fake reports too. \nGun killings in america = weak law on guns.",
"I learned about this today in my sociology class.\n\nThe main reason this happens is because there are 44 million MORE men than women in India. India also has a large amount of young people. Because there are so many men, there is a lot of pent up sexual tension for men. This tension combined with women becoming increasingly independent in a patriarchal society (not something their culture wants to see) leads to this gang rape.",
"Probably has to do at least partly with police corruption, and not having to be reprimanded. In addition, they still have a very clan-ish society and views of women are negative. In addition, the sexual code of Hinduism is very strict, especially about who can be with who, so people will take advantage of not so conventional opportunities when they arise.",
"This question reminds me of a post about a week ago by [u/OKCThrowaway22221](_URL_16_) when he [created a fake online profile as a female as a joke](_URL_17_)\n\nWhy is there so much aggressive behavior towards females?\n\nSeems like, some guys (not all), given the opportunity, will behave inappropriately. Perhaps due to society that values females less than males?",
"India has a population of 1.2 billion. I've seen news of some 3-4 gang rape cases during the last year. I'm sure there are much more cases than what get's published, but it still doesn't indicate gang rape would be more common in India than other countries. Is there actual sources to show the prevalence?",
"Look at the golds! Props to OP on troll job, can you really not see his subversive attempt to out you all as hand wringing racists for what it is?\nGood job gang! You got banged!",
"I dont understand how someone could even rape ....it mind boggles me ...Im afraid for my sister everytime they leave the house"
] |
Why do many people tend to die in Quarry Waters/Lakes. What makes them more dangerous than a regular lake or body of water | [
"Two of my brothers friends were killed doing just this. Separate incidences (lessons were not learned!!!) but both jumped from 85ft in to Preston Hill quarry and if you want an idea of what is under there watch this:\n\n_URL_0_",
"I would think it's the secretive nature of quarries. people seem more apt to do careless or reckless things when hidden from view whether it be to consume too much alcohol or to attempt a triple lindy",
"Someone once told me that quarry lakes have lots of trapped air bubbles that can lead to shifts in rock causing down current that can pull you under... also lots of mining equipment and wires."
] |
At what minimum time is it more efficient to idle than turn your car off then back on? | [
"For gas consumption...30 seconds.\n\n\nBut it wears your engine bearings every time you start the engine.",
"You probably put more wear and tear on your engine by turning it off and on again everytime you stop for more than 30 seconds rather than leaving it on. Your engine's bearings aren't like regular ball bearings, the crankshaft and connecting rods (the biggest moving pieces in your engine rely on oil pressure from an oil pump to provide a thin layer of oil these parts ride on. When your engine is idling there is enough oil pressure to prevent metal-on-metal contact, but when you're starting the engine the starter does not spin the motor fast enough to provide sufficient oil pressure to prevent this from happening",
"This depends on how old your car is. In newer cars it's like 10 seconds."
] |
What's the Difference Between the Shia and Sunni aspects of Islam? As both groups are following the Koran, whats the major differences? | [
"I was born shia. There are at least three sub-sects in Shia and many more in Sunni so it is very hard to pinpoint a concrete difference. \n\nTo explain the difference, it might help to explain their history and how they came to be. I happened after Muhammad's death. According to Shias, he had appointed Ali (his son-in-law) as his successor or Caliph (there are no prophets after Muhammad in either Shia or Sunni schools of thought). Sunni, however, hold that Muhammad did not make any such appointment and the caliphate must then go to Abu Bakr (who was chosen by nomination).\n\nThis one event led to the initial fork in the religion. Shias claim that Muhammads family was sidelined and Islam was politicized after this while Sunnis claim it was the right decision as the majority of Muslims at the time had voted. The divide would widen eventually reaching a critical point at the time of Hussain (Muhammad's grand-son and Ali's son) who was killed by the ruling caliph of the time.\n\nSince then, they both developed independently of each other with the same basic tenants of Islam but slightly different interpretations. For instance, most Sunni's pray with their arms closed while Shias keep it open. Shias have slightly different form of Zakat (charity). Shias can 'combine' two prayers at a time (there are five total) while Sunnis cannot. The only differences I can think of are merely superficial. The only major difference I can think of is that the Shias (only the Twelvers, a specific sub-sect) claim that there will be one final Caliph (the 12th Imam) to lead the Muslim world who will resurrect at an unspecified time. Sunnis do not believe anything similar to that. \n\nIn recent times, this superficial divide has grown even deeper due to geo-political reasons. The two major players in the middle-east drive this. Iran is considered Shia and Saudi Arabia is considered Sunni. More often than not, it fits the narrative to simply claim a fight as Shia vs Sunni while trying to explain the actual mechanics, which are far far more complicated.\n\nTry these links:\n[Succession to Muhammad (Wiki)](_URL_0_)\n\n[After the Prophet by Lesley Hazelton](_URL_0_)\n\n[List of Differences](_URL_1_)\n\nEDIT: Changed '9th Imam' to '12th Imam'. Please don't tell my mom she will beat me. Thanks u/irtizzza16 from [here](_URL_2_)",
"Basically after Muhammed died there were disagreements as to who should follow him and become caliph. Ali, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law became caliph but only after a couple competitors were assasinated. Ali was eventually assasinated as well and it all went to hell after that. That was where the split occurred. \n \nWithin both Sunni and Shia there are a broad variety of beliefs and practices. Similar to Christianity.The Wahabi sect from Saudi are extremly fundamentalist. But many Muslims are fairly secular. They might observe Ramadan or not eat pork and that's the extent of it.",
"Most of the times this question is asked the focus of the answers lies mostly on the political aspect.\nIdeologically, the main difference between the two sects is that Sunnis give higher importance to the practical aspect of Islam i.e., imitating the actions and life of the prophet, while Shias consider theology and love of God and the prophet's household above everything else.",
"I can't really add to solidsnuke's post except to link the [Crash Course episode on Islam](_URL_3_]"
] |
Why there doesn't seem to be any defense against a DDOS. | [
"So a DDoS would be like me having 1,000 people an hour call your cell phone, constantly, so that you couldn't make any calls and (more importantly) people trying to call you couldn't get through. Though in the computer world it's more like 100,000 or 1,000,000 an hour. The point of the attack is to prevent legitimate web traffic from reaching a site. In that sense, it's fairly easy to do. All you need is enough people to ping a site, either voluntarily or via a botnet (a network of infected computers that will do this on your command). The solution for your phone would be to have another phone number that people knew to call in the event your main number was messed up, but that kind of coordination can be costly and confusing to people. Some websites and companies can reduce the impact of a DDoS by rerouting traffic, but it's not something that's easy to accomplish, especially for commerce based sites.",
"a DDOS if done correctly is indistinguishable from a very active time.\n\nWhen reddit links to a comic creators site. That's great! They get a lot of valuable traffic they wouldn't EVER turn away. But then their site can't handle the traffic (or the DDOS) and the site stops accepting new requests for information, so other people stop being able to see it.\n\nI'm sure there are ways you can lessen the blow of something like this but that's what makes it so commonly difficult to do so."
] |
Why don't modern compilers such as gcc cut out the middle man (assembly) and compile directly to machine code? | [
"Assembly is just machine code written in slightly more readable form. There's no reason to cut it out.",
"I think you're confused, gcc does indeed compile source (which could have been written in any of a variety of languages) directly to machine code."
] |
What's stopping us from harnessing the energy in lightning? | [
"Energy storage\n\nWe simply have no way of storing the concentrated power but short duration involved in a lightning strike. \n\nPeople have imagined capacitor storage banks, heating piles etc. but as yet we have not created a technology that can store that energy quickly enough\n\nAny other method of storing energy in present usage i.e. batteries, hydrogen, hydro etc. are *incredibly* slow in comparison.\n\nThere are a great many other considerations like unpredictability, distribution etc. but essentially ....\n\n\n.... storage",
"It turns out we use a lot more power than lightning strikes. A lightning strike would power an average US home for about 10 days. Which sounds great, until you figure out that the US has 300 million people, and 30 million lightning strikes a year. \n\nSo even if we could figure out a way to safely use that energy, and captured every single strike in the country, blanketing it in an obscene amount of lightning rods and wires and batteries and things, we'd be able to save about 1 day a year's worth of power, or less than half a percent.",
"In theory, could lightning serve as an energy source to kick start nuclear fusion in future reactors?"
] |
How do older movies look better on Bluray? Ex: The Shining | [
"Film records at a resolution higher then any current media form can play back, so they can take a movie that is old and still transfer it to new media like blue ray to give you a better looking product.",
"Same way if Michelangelo painting (original analog film) is scanned on crappy scanner (DVD) or better one (Blue Ray) you will get better and better digital picture as a result.",
"You know how when you're far away from something, it looks blurry and hard to make out?\n\nAnd when you're up close you can see all the details that were invisible before?\n\nWell imagine standing far away and holding up a wire grid between your eyes and the scene before you, and then colouring each square of the grid in based on the main colour you can see through it. So maybe for the top left square of the grid, there's just blue sky. The one beside it has mainly blue sky, but just a little bit of white cloud too - well that square counts as all blue. The one beside that is mainly cloud, but still some sky too - that one counts as all white.\n\nDo this for all the squares and your grid will give you an \"image\" of what you were looking at. It'll probably be very rough and ugly, but it'll be a not-inaccurate representation of what was in front of you.\n\nNow let's do that again, only instead of being far away, let's go very close to the scene. You wouldn't see as much stuff through the wire grid as you did the first time, but you would get better detail on the part you could see. Just like how when you stand far away things are blurry, but when you're up close they're crisper!\n\nNow imagine if you stood far away again, but you had a much denser grid - the squares were a lot smaller on it. If you painted that grid in, you might get, right in the middle, something that looked a lot like a mini-version of your second grid painting! It would have pretty much the same level of detail in it that that painting had.\n\nThat's how digital movies get better looking as technology advances: ever-smaller squares in the grid make it possible to include more and more detail. If the squares are small enough, they become practically invisible and it's very hard to tell the difference between the grid and the real scene. But if you zoom in on the grid you'll start to see those flat squares, whereas zooming in on reality, well it's like walking closer to what you're looking at - new details make themselves clear.\n\nNow analogue movies are sort of (sort of) like reality. You can zoom in and see more detail than before. So if you have a good wire grid and you made an image of the analogue picture, then you could capture more details than if you took an image of the same picture with a bad wire grid.",
"When they filmed these old movies, they used film like they have done until recently. Film doesn't work with pixels, so there is no limit as to how detailed the image can be on the film (as far as our eyes are concerned). The only limitation of crispness and clarity in the image was the quality of the lenses they used.\n\nSo if we scan the old film reels at HD resolution, frame by frame, we get HD quality versions of the same thing! Later on, when the 4XHD solutions and stuff comes along, we can get these old film reels out again and scan them at that resolution. That is, unless they a already scanned and preserved at super-high resolutions.\n\nThis is also part of why many are unhappy that movies are filmed in HD with digital cameras now. Sure, it looks great and everything, and it's more flexible and that stuff, but you can no longer convert it up to higher resolutions when new standards come along. You're stuck with the 1080p resolution. It's a sign that the whole \"timeless classic\" movie era is over, and movies are no longer permanent, but a passing thing."
] |
The Koch brothers and their influence on politics. | [
"The government was worried about people donating lots of money to candidates allowing them to buy more commercials, and pay more people to help them get elected. They were worried that If people could do that the politicians would do lots of things to help out their friends who helped them get elected. \n\nSo the government passed a laws that said you couldn't give a politician more than $2500 for an election. Some people didn't like this law, they thought that money was the same thing as speech, so they asked the supreme court to look at the laws the government had made. The supreme court agreed with them, and said that you could spend all the money you want on a politician's election as long as you don't give it to the politician.\n\nNow people with a lot of money like the Koch brothers can go and find candidates they like and buy all the ads they want telling people to vote for their candidates, and no one can do anything about it."
] |
Why do I feel awkward seeing nudity/sexuality when I am with my parents? Its just the human nature after all. | [
"Normally we do not see our parents as sexual creatures. Since we do not look at our parents in a way befitting that type of intimacy, it feels wrong (edit: I should state \"wrong\" meaning socially abnormal, as much of the social stuff is learned behavior, that doesn't make it \"wrong\" in the traditional sense). \n\nThat was more \"ELI18\" but it's the best I could do.",
"Oh well the explanation is simple. As a child grows up comforted and loved by his mother and raised properly by his father, something begins to build inside him. An ever growing love and admiration for ones parents. But as you pass through puberty and discover your sexuality, you begin to realize what sex is. It is knowing how sex is gratifying and how it expresses love that makes you wonder... What if my parents want to have sex with me.\n\nThis is perfectly normal, every child wonders about the day his/her parents will finally make that move, giving that child the bond everyone has and wants with their parents (Am I right guys or what!) \n\nProblems happen when parents don't initiate sex. The child begins to feel unloved and not desirable, as if he/her will never make his/her parents proud at all. \n\nThis is never discussed or shared, but when parents love their kids you'll know.\n\nTry being provocative around your parents, feeling your dads muscles, or showing your mom that hole in your boxers that \"Accidentally\" ripped with a little bit of your penis hanging out of it, asking how to fix it for you. Any loving parent will understand that its now time to show their child how much they love them."
] |
What would happen to a human body in space? | [
"* Water on your tongue and eyeballs would begin to boil off.\n\n* Your eyeballs would bulge, and there would be pain in your sinuses and inner ears.\n\n* You would pass out in ~15 seconds due to lack of oxygen.\n\n* Over time, your body would dessicate.",
"In addition to what the others have said, [this page](_URL_0_) is usually linked when the question is asked here."
] |
What was so offensive about that Jeopardy champion contestant guy, Arthur Wu, and the way he played the game that made him so hated? | [
"Well, I wouldn't say that it was offensive, but as a longtime Jeopardy viewer, it was distracting.\n\nThe typical style of play is to pick a category and, if you get the right answer, to stay with it, usually moving top to bottom. This allows a player to get a rhythm, get used to the \"feel\" of a category (they often use similar wordplay, themes, or hints in all clues of a category), and it's nice as a viewer to be able to answer 5 questions on Greek mythology, then move on to 5 questions about pop music. It's a pleasant flow.\n\nArthur Chu knew that Daily Doubles were rarely found in the top (cheapest) clues on the board, and that they were a key to winning. So he went hopping around the board, picking the more expensive clues in different categories first. This also had the effect of keeping his opponents (and the viewers) off balance, since they couldn't get into the flow of a category.\n\nThen we get to his Final Jeopardy bets. He usually would be in the lead going into the Final, and would make a bet to ensure, if he got the question wrong, that he would tie with the second-place player, if they got it right. He did this to ensure that any player who managed to tie him would get a bigger payout (losing, even by a dollar, drops your winnings to $2k for 2nd place, and $1k for third, but all money is kept between tied players). A lot of people viewed this as uncompetitive, and were annoyed that he could have made more money with more interesting wagers.\n\nCompare to Ken Jennings, who was a good player, followed the traditional gameplay styles, made big, exciting bets (which sometimes could have ruined him), and joked with Alex when he got the chance. I don't know of anyone who had any problem with him winning 74 games.\n\n**TL;DR He was a good Jeopardy player who played to win, but wasn't necessarily good television.**",
"Arthur Chu jumped categories a lot in an effort to hunt down the Daily Double. Some people felt this was unsportsmanlike. Others were annoyed because they couldn't keep track of the category themes when playing along. \n\nBecause he was successful and nontraditional he be came a kind of villain for the very tiresome sort of person who could be made to care about such things.",
"People are just butt hurt because he played with a different strategy than the thousands of players before him. As long as he didn't break any rules, which it doesn't sound like he did, people need to get over it."
] |
Why does cold metal feel wet? | [
"The feeling of \"wetness\" isn't actually a sense, but more of a combination of senses. If you've ever touches water through gloves, your hand feels like it's wet, but you're not actually getting any water on you. This is because, even though you have gloves on, it's a combined triggering of your cold thermoreceptors and various mechanoreceptors that contribute to the perception of wetness, and these can be felt through the gloves. The same is true for the metal."
] |
Why is BB King a "legend" and not just a long lived and long active musician? | [
"There were a handful of artists who came out of the south and brought their distinctive style of blues to a wider audience in the 1940s. Until that time that kind of music had essentially no audience beyond the people who heard them play live in small bars and clubs in the south (i.e. mostly a black audience).\n\nThe convergence of mass-produced recordings, an increase in interest in folk music, and the fact that from thousands of small clubs and the bands that played in them only a few individuals were talented enough to make it into the public eye transformed those people into legends.\n\nTheir records were the foundation for rock & roll. Kids across the US and in the UK heard their albums and figured out how to play guitar like them just by listening and experimentation. The crucible of segregation and racism created the conditions for the fusion of \"white\" music like country & western with \"black\" music like blues to create rock & roll. \n\nThe pantheon is very small. Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Lead Belly, Howlin' Wolf, etc."
] |
Why do we feel so thirsty after eating sweets (ex: Ice Cream, Chocolate, etc)? | [
"When you eat sugar, it is absorbed relatively quickly into your blood. Now your blood has more molecules (sugar) floating in it than usual. Your body tries very hard to keep your blood the way it likes it (not too acidic, not too much water, not too much or too little anything). Now there's extra sugar in your blood, so your body wants to add more water to dilute your blood back to normal. So your body sends thirsty signals so you'll drink water. This can also happen after very salty food."
] |
Why/how to people get knocked unconscious? | [
"As far as benefits go, I don’t think humans “evolved” to go unconscious with a blow to the head. This would be like saying we evolved to go into cardiac arrest; doesn’t make much sense. You could of course always speculate a scenario where going unconscious is advantageous, say if it kept our ancestors alive during combat with a dangerous predator, while those who stayed conscious and tried to run or fight were simply killed off. Again it’s just speculation. I think others were on the right track behind the mechanism of going unconscious. \nEdit: You could argue recovery is the large reason behind going unconscious after suffering head trauma as exemplified by the unconsciousness of sleep."
] |
How does red dot sights work? | [
"The dot in a red or green dot sight is not actually a coloured point that's hovering in a fix spot in the air like an iron sight does.\n\nInstead, the red dot you see is a reflection of a little red lamp that falls onto a spherical mirror which filters out only the red (or green) spectrum. This mirror is installed in a way that no matter what angle *you* look on it, the Red dot will always point towards the spot the bullet will hit. \n\nEDIT: That way the Red dot itself is virtual and basically only exists in your eyes, two people looking through the same sight at the same time from different angles would see the spots in different 3-dimensional places, but still pointed towards the target.",
"a red dot sight (also known as a reflex sight or a reflector sight) bounces a laser off of a reflector that is curved so that the angle the dot reflects off of it changes where it appears to reflect off of the reflector. The reflector itself is actually transparent, and that's what you are looking through when you look through the sight. The curve of the reflector is tuned so that the image of the laser that is reflected appears to stay in one position relative to the target that you might be looking at through the sight, with it ideally being kept in the center of the reflector.\n\nyou could think of it as sort of the opposite effect of using a curved mirror to focus light to a point, where the image of the reticule is at the point, and your eye being able to see it from anywhere within a certain cone of vision.\n\nif you;re curious about the specific internal workings, there are some good diagrams on the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_)",
"The other posters are correct in how the device functions. However, I think you are asking, \"Why is it an effective way to aim something even if it only has one point?\" The simple answer is it is built to have the dot lie on a parallel line to the gun barrel. It is worth noting that reflex sights are not for long range or precision shooting. They are more for close-medium range combat situation, i.e. getting all shots in a bad guy shaped target. To get the best accuracy out of a reflex sight, you should mount it as close to the barrel as possible so that the point of aim and point of impact are as close together as possible. This principal also applies to scopes as a perfect scope(mounted perfectly on a perfect gun) at 0 windage and yardage should only be off by the same distance it is away from the center line of the barrel."
] |
How does a (bitcoin) currency exchange work? | [
"It looks like the left side represents the amount of transactions happening. The bottom line represents time. The right side represents the amount of $ that it sold for. The actual bar shows what the highest amount was and the lowest amount was at that given time paid for those transactions."
] |
Why is it that sometimes we humans can sense when another human is looking at us? | [
"Confirmation bias.\n\nThere's a ton of times when you look over and nobody is watching you, but you only remember the times when they are.",
"Whilst there is an element of confirmation bias, there is also the fact that we have evolved as social animals to detect this kind of thing. One proposed explanation for the fact that we have white eyes around a coloured iris is that it highlights the pupil area and allows us to better distinguish the direction that someone else is looking in.\n\nChances are that (some of the time at least) you are subconsciously picking out people looking in your general direction from your peripheral vision - there are various studies suggesting that you subconsciously see a lot that you're not aware of."
] |
Bid-Ask spread and how Brokers make money off it. | [
"If someone comes up to you and says \"i want to buy a cake for $1\" and you're a cake broker, you would then go out to all the cake sellers and if one of them said \"i'm selling cakes for 0.98\" then you'd make .02 and selling it to your captive buyer for $1.\n\nlike that. no actual cake involved.",
"They buy at the low price (the bid) and sell at the high price (the ask). \n\nBuying 100 shares of a certain stock for £740 and selling them at £745 means they made £5 on that trade. Repeating that a few thousand times a day means they made a pretty significant amount of money in the day (in reality the £5 is likely more like £1 or less and the trade is done by a computer)."
] |
In regards to sports: Why is it considered "proper sportsmanship" to essentially stop trying when you are comfortably winning? | [
"...so as not to humiliate the opponents. Bad enough they lose by a minute, awful if they lose by a mile.",
"In professional sports like NFL Football, if you have under a certain amount of time left on the clock and have over a certain amount of points over the opposing team, it is customary to \"take a knee\". Sometimes it's as much avoiding risking injury to your players as it is rubbing salt in the wound.\n\nThink about it, you have two touchdowns and a field goal with less than 30 seconds on the clock for the game, statistically speaking, a lead that would be impossible to lose with. Now, you could run all out and get another touchdown and, in the process, lose one of your players for a few games. Given the amount of games that the NFL plays in a regular season, losing a good player for 3 weeks is a large chunk of the season.",
"All players should always be trying to play their very best, no matter what the situation is. Any player who doesn't is usually not well respected by their teammates. It's the coaches, and their decisions, that lead to teams 'toning down' the game if they have a comfortable win.\n\nSo, why would coaches not want their teams to have huge, blowout victories over other teams? As a sign of respect towards the other team's coaches and players. If you're really blowing another team out of the water, the respectful thing to do is slow down the game, and essentially say \"I respect you for coming out to play and giving it your all\". The disrespectful thing to say is \"I'm going to take you to town for all you're worth simply because I can\". A win is a win, a loss is a loss. Getting an extra two or three scores when you're up by five won't change the outcome, but it's essentially a show off thing to do.\n\nImagine a little league soccer game. One team's up by 8 goals about halfway through the game. Which of these coaches is a more respectful, honorable sportsman: the one who encourages the team to keep going, as hard as they can, score as many goals as possible, and really beat the other team up; or the one who lets a few more rookie players onto the field, and gives their star player a break, and encourages the team to be respectful of their opponents? It's just a decent, nice thing to do, to show that you respect your opponents and don't just want to humiliate them.",
"My two cents,\n\nIts a very American sport thing to stop trying when you're comfortably ahead.\n\nWhile its bad sportsmanship to walk around the pitch paying silly buggers most sports in the world its fair game to keep the score rolling.",
"Its a cultural thing. In US, its not to humiliate. In most Mediterranean cultures it would be disrespectful to not play your hardest the entire game",
"1) To avoid humiliating the opponents. \n\n2) To save the energy and health of the top players for a future game where it will be needed. There is no reason to risk the health of your best players if your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th string replacements are sufficient for you to gain victory.",
"On Australian football, percentage can often matter for making the finals/playoffs, so no mercy is shown other than to rest players."
] |
How can they tell how much oxygen is in my blood just by shining a little light at my finger? | [
"The colour of your blood changes when it's oxygen rich compared to when it's oxgygen depleted. Your finger is a good place to get a reading on that because it's quite thin (to let the light through) but gets reasonable blood flow, your earlobe would also be a good but less common place.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a picture of two blood samples - the one on the left is after the subject held their breath for 7 minutes, the one on the right is fresh."
] |
How can people tell when they're being watched? | [
"I am pretty sure our brains are able to process information very quickly related to a pair of eyes on a person (or some other animal perhaps) locked on us. It would be a valuable survival mechanism. And like most valuable survival mechanisms it will over compensate and be subject to false positives (no one actually looking), the trade-off being that you do not have many false negatives (missing cases where someone is actually watching). People with this skill lived longer and reproduced passing on the ability. \n\nSo I would guess it is the result of evolution. If you are religious, then God did it.",
"I would conjecture that there is a heavy dose of confirmation bias in there too. I don't know about you, but I look around all the time for no reason. Suppose I'm reading a book, and I look up for no reason. If there's a pair of eyes in my new field of peripheral vision, my brain is pretty good at knowing if it's looking at me. And if it is, I'll say, \"the reason I looked up is because that guy was looking at me\". But if there's no one there, I won't even give it a second thought. People are good at rationalizing actions after the fact, and often that means making up reasons for why they took actions which don't actually correspond to reality.",
"There is nothing telepathic to this. It’s simply that we are very good at putting together an understanding of our environments with senses other than sight.\n\nThere are a million and one tells that there is a person near to you. We can locate people in a space simply by the sound they give off or the effect they have on the acoustics on the room.\n\nAs Not_Me_But_A_Friend pointed out this skill is very important for survival. We take in huge amounts of information; most of this is ignored or processed subconsciously. The information only becomes conscious if it is important, sometimes it becomes conscious in an overt way (like most of our sight and hearing) sometimes it becomes conscious in a strange feeling (like someone watching you.)\n\nEdit: I remember watching a TV show in which they tested this. It may not be scientific, but it’s some evidence. In a crowded scenario people could not tell if someone was looking at them. In an emptier scenario people could not tell if someone was looking at them. They could identify when someone stops and holds still. If 4 or 5 people are walking behind you and one of them just stops you will get a sudden feeling of uncomfortableness and it will be cantered on the person that stopped. Also if someone sneaks up behind a wall or obstacle and stays there watching someone that person will sometimes be able to identify them.",
"Another cool article on this subject by biologist Rupert Sheldrake: \n_URL_0_",
"we cant. and you alluded to the explanation in your text. We often at random check our surroundings: we occasionally look up in an exam, while watching tv, walking etc. \n\nSometimes when we look around we'll catch someone else doing the same, in our direction. And when that happens we register it. \n\nThats it: its just coincidence and confirmation bias. No special skill. Arguably, looking around occasionally is a good survival trait we could have evolved. But there's no special skill involved.",
"they cant i saw it on through the wormhole with morgan freeman"
] |
Repressed memories | [
"Repressed memories have not been proven to exist but the theory goes that trauma can cause you to selectively forget that the event has happened. Later in life a smell or a sound can trigger the re-emergence of the memory. There is no way to tell if a repressed memory is true or not without the aid of collaborating evidence since humans are so great at manufacturing memories.\n\nThe problem with repressed memories is that for a while it was popular to have therapists essentially convince people that they had been sexually abused as a child. After years of this, and many times where the sexual abuse was proven to be false, the fad died down. As it turns out, the way the therapists were trying to get people to remember things is actually a good way to get people to manufacture memories. This does not disprove the possibility of repressed memories, just that you have to be careful about them.",
"There isn't much (any?) evidence that repressed memories actually exist. What seems more likely is that people are put into a suggestible state, often under hypnosis, and false memories are created by asking leading questions. In effect, people dream something, and become convinced it actually happened. This often leads to cases of \"alien abduction\" and also leads to false accusations of child abuse.\n\nSource: Carl Sagan, *The Demon-Haunted World*",
"They exist. \n\nI watched a co-teacher in a residential program fight off an invisible attacker in her sleep every night (shared dorms), then \"wake up\" and spend about an hour as her ten-year-old self. As a child she had had an imaginary friend, a \"white lady\" that she talked to for comfort. I was the one who tried to keep her from going out the door and wandering the campus; I was wearing a long bathrobe; I became the White Lady to her. Each night she'd talk to me, ask me if I could get \"Gary\" to leave her alone, to not make her make the movies anymore, to not invite his friends to their Special Parties. \n\nThe nights were episodic; she'd pick up where she left off the night before. She was reliving the months leading up to the final group-abuse event that was finally witnessed. \n\nIn the day, she'd remember nothing. At night, as a girl, she'd cry because Gary threw her special birthday dress over the side of the boat when she didn't want to play the popsicle game with one of his friends. The next day, she'd say \"What did I talk about?\" , and if I told her \"your birthday dress\" she'd say \"Oh that old thing, I gave it away to Goodwill.\" \n\nShe knew something was happening, and knew she needed to know in real life. We were all terrfied, of saying the wrong thing, or of not saying enough. How it was handled, how she learned what she had been saying, took a while to figure out how to do safely but we did it (and hooray for abuse victim's support centers, and and all the good therapists out there.)\n\nShe had all the signs of an abuse victim -- overly sexualized clothing and body language but no actual physical contact with men, ever. Poor personal hygiene because she couldn't touch herself, even to wash or wipe. Great skill and empathy in working with the more needy kids, too.\n\nThe trigger for the episodes, it turned out, was her abuser. He was scheduled to be released from prison and had contacted her - sent her flowers and a note saying \"Can't wait to see you again\". She knew she didn't want to see him, but not why.\n\nIn the end it all worked out as best as these things can -- she got help and started working through it all. \n\nBut my god was it heartbreaking to watch that first eruption, that first bubbling up of long-suppressed horrors.",
"From what I've heard there's no such thing and it's usually stuff people have made up (not necessarily on purpose mind). For example I \"remember\" my parents having a blue mini when I was younger. They had no such car. (It is something to do with how kids form memories)\n\nIt pretty much depends who you ask, but it makes for fun TV.",
"Some memories in life are so tragic to some people that their brain subconsciously blocks them out to protect itself from being traumatized any further.",
"The opposite is more likely to be true about memories and trauma. Trauma usually produces intrusive, persistent memories that come up by themselves and dominate our thinking, not memories that we bury down deep and forget. This is how PTSD usually works, producing memories that leave us unable to function normally because they take up so much of our attention. Our brains want us to remember things that got us hurt so we won't do it again (hyper-vigilance is also part of PTSD) and sometimes over does it. \n\nIt's also common for people to deal with trauma by thinking *around* the memory- they remember all of it but they just don't accept the consequences of it (e.g. sure daddy drank a lot/hit us, but it wasn't really a problem), but actually forgetting the memory of something that was traumatic is fairly rare. \n\nOn the other hand, people are fairly well wired to believe whatever it is that the group around them believes. Brain washing usually works by creating pressure to believe the same thing as someone who is offering you comfort and inclusion, an explanation for a confusing world, and emotional catharsis. This is what goes on in cult indoctrination, false memory recovery is often the same sort of thing on a smaller scale.",
"The opposite is more likely to be true about memories and trauma. Trauma usually produces intrusive, persistent memories that come up by themselves and dominate our thinking, not memories that we bury down deep and forget. This is how PTSD usually works, producing memories that leave us unable to function normally because they take up so much of our attention. Our brains want us to remember things that got us hurt so we won't do it again (hyper-vigilance is also part of PTSD) and sometimes over does it. \n\nIt's also common for people to deal with trauma by thinking *around* the memory- they remember all of it but they just don't accept the consequences of it (e.g. sure daddy drank a lot/hit us, but it wasn't really a problem), but actually forgetting the memory of something that was traumatic is fairly rare. \n\nOn the other hand, people are fairly well wired to believe whatever it is that the group around them believes. Brain washing usually works by creating pressure to believe the same thing as someone who is offering you comfort and inclusion, an explanation for a confusing world, and emotional catharsis. This is what goes on in cult indoctrination, false memory recovery is often the same sort of thing on a smaller scale."
] |
Why Does the Tetanus Booster Vaccine Hurt so Much? | [
"The tetanus vaccine is a toxoid, meaning that what they inject is not living attenuated bacteria, but rather the toxin that Clostridium tetani produces. This toxin is neurotoxic in that it causes intense muscle spasms (think the classic 'lock-jaw' of tetanus). This is what kills people who get tetanus (tetany is medical-talk for sustained muscle contraction). The toxoid in the vaccine causes these muscle spasms and pain, but since there is no new production of toxin, your body recognizes, fights off, and then builds immunity to the disease. The same process happens without the vaccine, but unfortunately the body is usually not strong enough to not die in the process.\n\nHope this answers your question."
] |
Why does the moon always look so small and terrible when I try to take a picture of it with my cell phone? | [
"First off, there is no galaxy s5 (yet). And secondly, the reason is because the moon is small compared to the field of view. We tend to exaggerate in our brains the size of things in the sky because there is nothing beside them to compare to. Cloud pictures are the same way: almost always a disappointment. If you want the moon to look bigger, try using a decent camera's zoom. Taking a picture of the moon while it is not far above the trees (or whatever is covering the ground in the photo) also sometimes can make a big difference."
] |
Wardriving | [
"Wardriving used to refer to driving around trying to find an open wi-fi network to access the internet. These days, it's easy to find an open wi-fi network (and cellular internet is common), so it would rarely necessary to drive around to find one."
] |
Why is the minimum age for president in the US 35? Is there something special about that age, or is it just kind of a number that was decided on a long time ago and was kept around? | [
"The main reason is it really is just an arbitrary number they chose, but one which is sufficiently young enough to allow a good portion of the civic population access to the office with a reliable \"live til the end of the term\" while also ensuring that whomever gets the job is likely to have some form of life experience to make them a good president.\n\nIt's important to remember that the presidency the founding fathers, besides Hamilton, envisioned was not a powerful office. The people running the county were meant ot be congress, and the presidency becoming the strongest of the three branches has largely born out of the job of being the executive and multiple crises moments dumping authority onto it/"
] |
how it works that I can Google a holiday location on my desktop PC then the next time I open the Facebook app on my mobile I get a "Suggested Post" for accommodation at that location. | [
"If your phone is an Android phone, or if it has the Google search app, your Google searches are preserved across devices. Now, if you read the Facebook Mobile privacy agreement, you would understand that it has sweeping power over nearly every bit of data on your phone, including the ability to read and send SMS messages, and, as is relevent to this post, app data."
] |
Why can't Iran have nuclear weapons | [
"The existing nuclear powers and the majority of non-nuclear countries attempt to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. This desire is universal but considered even more important when a country deemed irresponsible, unstable, or having ties to terrorist organizations is concerned. Very few governments want Iran to possess nuclear weapons.\n\nThis concern is amplified with regard to Iran for the following stated reasons; \n\n* Iran is considered a significant state sponsor of terrorism. \n* Iran is considered irresponsible and more likely to use or threaten to use a weapon. \n* Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon would lead other nations to acquire nuclear weapons including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. \n* Apocalyptic or fatalistic quotes from Iranian political and military leaders. \n* Iran has few friends and has alienated many world powers. \n\nThe goal is stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, rather than Israel or Pakistan have the right to nuclear weapons and Iran does not. Governments were very concerned about Pakistan becoming a nuclear power and remain very concerned about Pakistani nuclear weapons.",
"From a treaty standpoint, Iran signed the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty that states that countries without nuclear weapons will not develop them.\n\nFrom a practical standpoint, Iran has been very openly hostile to the US and its allies, with former presidents of Iran stating that they will \"wipe Israel off the map\". \n\nThey also are well know for supplying weapons and money to palestinian groups like Hamas which regularly target israeli civilians and exist for the sole purpose of destroying the Jewish state.",
"Pakistan is probably going to be as big a problem as Iran would be. Not because of their values, or open hostility (there is some) but because the instability there makes it scarily possible that someone, say, non-governmental, might get hold of one and actually use it. This was a big concern after the Soviet collapse, that fringe groups might suddenly become nuclear powers.",
"Because they can't be trusted with them. Kind of like why we are concerned with North Korea having them as well.",
"It's NEVER good when the number of nuclear weapons on the planet increases, no matter WHO builds them.\n\nHowever, all the noise about Iran building a nuke is just conservative scaremongering.\n\nThe argument typically runs that Iran will actually USE a nuke if they had one, but that's bullshit, and for the same reason that you don't hear a lot of people worrying about North Korea's Fearsome Atomic Arsenal: they can't actually USE the damn, thing, it's just there for bluff and bluster.\n\nOh, but wait! The leaders are insane! They keep going on about Death to Everyone Who Isn't Us!\n\nYyyeeeaaaahhhhh...no. Doesn't matter. See, here's the hard reality of the situation: it just doesn't matter if the nation's leader is actually insane or is just all talk. Let's take North Korea's charming Kim clan as our example, because they probably come a lot closer to actual batshit insane than anyone in Iran.\n\nSo what would happen if Dear Leader one day up and ordered the entire nuclear arsenal--all one or two bombs--to be unloaded on, say, South Korea? Answer: nothing. Kim's cheese might have slipped off his cracker, but he doesn't hold an actual button connected to a nuclear missile. NO world leader does. He issues an order, and it has to go through channels.\n\nAnd in those channels, there are a lot of guys--some of whom wield a great deal of power themselves--who will understand perfectly what would happen next: one US sub parked off the coast would turn North Korea into a glass parking lot. It ain't gonna happen. The only thing we'd hear about it in the West would be a terse notice that Dear Leader had retired to a farm upstate to meditate, leaving General So An So in charge in the interim.\n\nAnd the same is true of Iran. Forget all that fiery rhetoric that Ahmadinejad used to spout when he was president, it's all talk. The president of Iran isn't the top guy in charge. In fact, there are 86 guys guys in line AHEAD of him. And they aren't idiots.\n\nThe same is true for a nation intentionally giving a nuke to terrorists: the national origins of a nuclear detonation can be traced, and if Iran gave a bomb to some terrorist group to use, they know perfectly well they'd be held responsible.\n\nYou know whose nukes you SHOULD be worried about? America's. Since the 1950s, there have been over a dozen incidents where we came > that < close to detonating a nuke on American soil (outside of controlled tests, obviously). In almost all cases, the only thing that prevented it was blind, doo-dah luck.\n\nThese days, the Air Force has been having a bit of a problem with their launch officers, the guys who turn the Actual Keys that launch the Actual Missiles. More and more of them have been caught cheating on their qualifications tests, and many have been found to be wrapped up in compromising situations, like having huge gambling debts.\n\nIn 2007, six live, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were loaded onto a B-52 and flown around the US for a couple days. Nobody authorized it, nobody knew it was happening, nobody can explain how it could even happen.\n\nSo, you know, sleep tight..."
] |
What is going on with the lost IRS emails? | [
"The IRS (internal revenue service) is in charge of federal taxes. A scandal emerged, where it was found that the IRS was intentionally targeting conservative groups trying to get tax-exempt, not-for-profit statuses.\n\nLois Lerner was the director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit, which decides whether groups are tax exempt. Basically, this scandal occurred under her leadership, and she has been trying to protect herself by pleading the 5th. Recently, Lerner claimed that about 2 years worth of her emails were lost in a \"computer crash\" and the hard drive that contained the information had been thrown out.\n\nSo, to answer your question, we don't know what's going on, because people are covering their rear ends, and then lying about it. And people are buying it.",
"Ok....\n\nHistory lesson on government email accounts.\n\nGovernment employees don't have \"unlimited\" email space on servers. Usually you have a pretty big size, but it's not unlimited. Call it 2GB for arguments sake.\n\nAfter 2GB, you lose the oldest stuff. But your system admin sends you an email when you hit 90% giving you a warning (1.8GB) so that you can backup anything you may need, to your personal archive.\n\nThese personal archives are on the MS Outlook Exchange Infrastructure, and frankly, they suck ass. They are notorious for crashing \"if you don't know what you are doing\" which most government employees don't.\n\nThe government buys cheap computers, and harddrives crash. People don't have redundant backups. So only emails that are still on the server are available.\n\nPeople purge all the time. It's really not a conspiracy, its just normal people getting rid of the crap in their emails.",
"The IRS and all federal agencies are required to save all emails between employees. Losing her emails is almost impossible and she is most certainly lying. Its ironic because the IRS tells you to keep years worth of past tax returns incase they want to go after you. The IRS also leaked Conservative super PAC donor lists and IRS officials made an alarming amount of visits to the White House. Long story short: Obama is using the IRS to attack, deter, and harass political opponents."
] |
Why was September 22 the equinox, yet it wasn't until today (September 25) that there were exactly 12 hours of daylight (sunrise 7:07 a.m. EDT, sunset 7:07 p.m. EDT)? | [
"Your daylight hours depend on your latitude, so different locations experience different daylight hours at all times.",
"The daylight hours are dependent on your location on the North-South axis.\n\nIt used to be that the Equinox (then known as Spring and Autumn solstice) was when there was equal day and night. The problem with this is that it was not the same date everywhere.\n\nThat day in Spain would be different than that day in Norway.\n\nBut the modern definition is that it is when the Earth's Equator is horizontal in relation to our orbit around the Sun meaning the Earth is completely \"straight\".",
"This is because the sun isn't a single point.\n\nSunrise is the moment any part of the sun is over the horizon, and sunset when it crosses completely below the horizon. It can take several minutes for the sun to cross over the horizon, and it takes longer the higher your latitude is. The result is at least part of the sun will be over the horizon, even on the equinox.",
"Mostly the reason is refraction. Our atmosphere makes objects that are close to the horizon look higher than they really are, by about 0.57° (it varies with atmospheric conditions). Another effect is that the sun is apparently about 0.53° (the size varies with distance) so the centre of the sun can be 0.27° below the horizon and we can still see a sliver of it. Finally, the earth is curved; even for a person of average height standing at the sea shore will see the horizon 0.04° lower than the horizontal.\n\nAdding the three effects together, the centre of the sun can be 0.87° below the horizontal and still be seen. The last effect is ignored in official calculations so the instant of sunrise and sunset is considered to be when the centre of the sun is 0.83° below the horizontal. This ignores variations due to atmospheric conditions, the sun's distance, and the height of the observer but usually provides a result correct within a minute or two (at sea).\n\nThe fact that sunrise and sunset occur with the centre of the sun below the horizontal explains why there are more than 12 hours in the day at the equinox.",
"The twelve hours of daylight on the equinox is only at/near the equator. Everywhere else has it either a bit before or a bit after."
] |
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