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What is the advantage for companies to create their own proprietary ports instead of micro USB, etc?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1saj20
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
For example: 3DS, PS Vita, iOS devices.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvpkpa",
"comment_text": [
"One reason is called \"vendor lock-in\":",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvlin2",
"comment_text": [
"2 reasons mostly:",
"It's easier to manage own protocol and extend it with features than make modifications to standards.",
"You must to buy accessories only from one vendor, it's called vendor lock-in."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvlr5t",
"comment_text": [
"Damn dog. Damn wife and kids! Damn life!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvkrkp",
"comment_text": [
"Apple's Lightning connector, like their previous 30-pin connector, has extra pins so that accessories can interact with an iOS device and do more than just output sound. And while it should go without saying, the ",
" end of Apple's Lightning cable has a standard USB plug in it, so it can plug into any USB charger."
],
"score": 0
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvl2pd",
"comment_text": [
"Another reason is also to make money. Lets say that company A has a usb port different than the 'standard.' Well, now that your cable has been chewed through by the dog, you cannot go to Best Buy and buy a cheap cable, you have to buy their cable."
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does oil fry food and make them crispy while water boils food and makes it soggy?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sao5r
| 15
| true
| false
| 0.76
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvn7i3",
"comment_text": [
"Actually you've kind of answered your question right there.",
"Oil fries food and makes it crispy.\nWater boils food and makes it soggy.",
"But oil that fries food does so at a ",
" higher temperature than 100",
" centigrade, the boiling point of water. That sound you hear when you fry something? That's the water boiling away out of the outside layers of the food. Frying ",
" water from the food by boiling the water off.",
"You could accomplish the same thing by baking the food, but frying heats the outer layer of the food much faster than any other method, so the outside gets hotter faster, while the inside of the food stays cooler. Cooler means moister interiors and hotter means cripy exteriors."
],
"score": 19
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvp5go",
"comment_text": [
"So if the appropriate elements were in factor, and you boiled water to higher degrees, you could water fry food?"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvperx",
"comment_text": [
"Huh? I don't know what \"So if the appropriate elements were in factor\" means at all.",
"And, how would I \"boil water to higher degrees?\" Do you mean, if I heated water to the ridiculously high temperature that the oil is at, would it \"fry\" the food?",
"Well, yes and no. Mostly no.",
"First, you're not dealing with liquid water any more. You're dealing with superheated steam, at around 375",
" F. So it's not in the excellent thermal contact with the material that liquid enjoys. Just like an oven, hot air doesn't transfer heat as fast. Thus, dryer interiors. Here's an example: If you get oil at 375",
" F a droplet will burn the hell out of your arm, right? But you stick that arm into your oven, which is set to 375",
" F, the air is at the same temperature as the oil. Why doesn't it burn? Because it transfers heat much less efficiently.",
"Second, your steam has no thermal mass. At least not compared to a vat of oil. When you drop a piece of breaded chicken into a deep-fryer the oil temperature drops from 375 to 335. If you were to do the same with even a larger volume of steam (say, if your oven were filled with 375",
" steam and no actual air) the temperature would drop much more.",
"Finally, there's no plausible way of getting your food out of this imaginary ",
" environment without getting a ton of water condensing on the surface. Which means soggy."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvpg9n",
"comment_text": [
"I remember from high school sciense class that with high amounts of pressure i think, you can make water have a higher steaming point"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvqcn3",
"comment_text": [
"It wouldn't work. Since the water in the food would be under the same conditions, the water that is cooking the food wouldn't be able to boil off the water in the food being cooked. Thus, no crispy outside. It would still be soggy."
],
"score": 3
}
|
||
ELI5: Why does dark matter have to exist?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sasin
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvnmv7",
"comment_text": [
"Dark matter refers to matter that we can't see that is inferred by the gravitational influence that we can see that can not be accounted for by the matter we can see.",
"Dark energy is used to explain why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. We can't see what is driving this increase so it's called dark energy.",
"Dark just refers to, \"Has not yet being found.\"",
"It doesn't have to exist. We could be wrong. Scientists know this. That's why they're hypothesises. ",
"Some dark matter though has been found and crossed off. These were already known to exist, neutrinos, but for a while it wasn't known that some neutrinos actually have mass. When that was discovered the amount of dark matter in the universe slightly fell. Just slightly. Neutrinos in no way accounted for any large amount."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvnx9x",
"comment_text": [
"Dark because we can't see what is doing it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvnx9x",
"comment_text": [
"Dark because we can't see what is doing it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvnkx1",
"comment_text": [
"It doesn't. The calculations could be wrong, or lots of other stuff. They could be right, we have no idea. \"Dark\" matter/energy, the dark in this context means unknown, as in we have no clue what it is, we think there is something there taking up matter and energy that we can't figure out, but we really don't \"know\"."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw3zz7",
"comment_text": [
"\"Dark\" matter actually refers to the fact that whatever is causing the observed gravitational anomalies doesn't interact electromagnetically and is thus, quite literally, dark. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why is it socially acceptable to wear all forms of fashion in public now, as opposed to 100 years ago?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sb6ly
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
Whenever I see footage of the 1890s -1920s, social sumptuary norms seem to be heavily enforced, i.e. men in hats, caps, full suits with vest, cravat, etc. Women in heavy, similar dresses. What has changed in the intervening years that we can now wear jeans, t-shirts, vests, suits, dresses... anything that strikes our fancy on the streets?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvrhgh",
"comment_text": [
"Fashion has changed.",
"What people wore then was fashionable at the time, but seems formal or old-fashioned now.",
"Equally, in the early 1900s, no one would have worn ",
"culottes",
" in public, because they would have seemed old-fashioned then. But they were fashionable a hundred or so years earlier.",
"Jeans, on the other hand, were invented in the late 1800s as a form of work clothes. How many people do you see these days going to restaurants in hard hats and high visibility vests? Because that is, now, the equivalent of what jeans were then. Jeans didn't become a fashion item until the 1950s."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvrkmc",
"comment_text": [
"I'm sure they thought they had wild and crazy style back then."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvt63h",
"comment_text": [
"Nice answer, but I'm not sure if that's the question the OP was asking. I don't think it was a simple ",
" question, but rather: ",
" ",
"Personally, I'm not sure if that premise is entirely true. ",
"In the present day, there is a lot more interaction between different cultures around the globe and we have a greater ability to manufacture different materials so yes, I guess that could increase the variety of clothing. ",
"On the whole though, there has always been a huge variety in fashion. That isn't new. It probably doesn't appear that way because you aren't able to notice the subtleties that differentiate. All suits are pretty similar, right? Not if you're into tailored clothing and recognise the differences between peaked versus notch lapels, single- versus double-breasted, worsted wools versus flannels. How does a morning coat differ from a frock coat? ",
"Looking back farther, there was in fact a huge variety in types of toga an ancient Roman might wear, or breechcloths a Red Indian would wear. Because that's not a part of your everyday life, you just wouldn't notice. It's like going to China and thinking everyone looks the same. ",
"I guarantee, if Cleopatra were to appear today in a time machine, she too would think everyone here \"looks the same.\""
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvu18z",
"comment_text": [
"Absolutely ",
"u/Iron-Patriot",
". It does feel like Victorian fashion, for example, was much more homogenous. Men had to wear suits, regardless of class. Perhaps what differentiated classes was the cut of suit, or perhaps wearing a peaked cap instead of a top hat. ",
"Which differs from today's society. I'm not sure you can determine someone's class from his or her dressing today. ",
"While I understand where you're coming from with regards to the subtleties of dressing, I wonder if it explains everything. One example of a further question I have is, when did it become socially okay for a man not to wear a hat?",
"I wonder if it's because the twentieth century was a slow gradual transition to an age of informality."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvvcdy",
"comment_text": [
"Ahh, yes I did actually mean to explain my other theory as to why the past may ",
" to have been more homogenous. There is more variety because of increased cultural crossover, and greater general wealth nowadays and that will be a part of it. But I still believe the major reason we think of the last being less varied is because it's so difficult to actually know what things were like and not think in generalisations. ",
"When we think of \"Victorian fashion\", ",
"these",
" types of images probably spring to mind, right? In reality, ",
" of people also looked like ",
"this",
". Or Elizabethan fashion being all about wigs, powdered faces and enormous collars when in reality most people were wearing some variation on a potato sack. ",
"When we think of certain periods, usually it's just a ",
" of what things were like then largely based on images of the famous, powerful or wealthy from that period.",
"Even now, I don't think it's very difficult to determine someone's class from what they're wearing. I know I often make judgements about people (I know it's bad) based on the clothes, but that might just be because I'm kinda into what I wear.",
"As far as hats go, I think they became worn less often simply because we don't need them as much. Hats can keep the rain out, keep the sun off, keep your head warm, etc. Because there were good reasons for most people to wear a hat, it was the social norm, and even if you didn't need to you would anyway. Most of us work indoors now though, we travel by car or some other covered transport, we can wear sunglasses. As fewer people actually needed to wear them, it didn't matter if you did or not anymore."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does it feel colder in my house when it is 25deg outside than when it is 45deg outside.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sarb3
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvn5lu",
"comment_text": [
"What do you mean?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvn90m",
"comment_text": [
"I mean the temp inside my house is set at 70. When it is only 45 outside, that feels comfortable. \nWhen it is 25 outside, it feels cold inside my house.",
"It is 70 inside my house when it is 45 outside.\nIt is 70 inside my house when it is 25 outside.\nBut 25 outside feels colder inside.",
"(All degrees Farenheit and are professionals. Do not try this at home)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvnav5",
"comment_text": [
"If the heater is set to 70, that means that your heater is trying to keep your house at 70, not that your house is actually at 70. there will be changes in temp add the heaterturns on and off. And also throughout the house. If the outside is very cold these differences will be greater than if that outside is close to the temperature of your house."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvoypo",
"comment_text": [
"When you inside your house, your house is still outside. When it's colder outside, things like your house get colder.",
"The Thermostat, which you use to set your temperature, does not necessary measure the temperature of all parts of your house. When it's colder outside, the warm air inside the house is much more likely to seek ways outside, and do so faster. The heating system may only run for 10 minutes at a time, every 20 minutes. When it's 45 degrees outside it might take 20 minutes for the house to chill, and it seems even. When it's 25 outside it make take only 10 minutes for the house to become chilly again.",
"Houses are not air tight, nor would you want them to be. They also lose heat through windows, or areas where you can feel drafts of cool air."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvr4kp",
"comment_text": [
"when it's 45 outside your heater runs less, when it is 25 outside your heater runs more, the extra heat dries out the moisture in your house, when I lived farther north than I do now, we use to combat this particular problem by sitting a coffee can full of water over the air duct , it doesn't make a drastic change but it helps, the other solution is buy a humidifier to put moisture back in the air. your air conditioner pulls the water out of the air ( you see the drain pipe ) which makes the air cooler and more comfortable . the more moisture in the air, the more it interacts with your skin. your skin loves water, oil, not so much. that's all I got."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: When did African-Americans begin to use a slur, "nigger", as slang to refer to one another?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sb4b5
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvzrnc",
"comment_text": [
"It is a form of empowerment, taking back a word that was used to denigrate and using it in a semi-positive manner.",
"Gays call themselves queers and dykes. Women call themselves bitches. By taking over a word like this, it lessens it power when used against them."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvr9z6",
"comment_text": [
"Paul Mooney (friend of Pryor) was one of the first with \"Nigga please\" in popular culture, but it would have gone back to the slave days. Blacks were called the N word, and thus referred to each other by it. It grew to become a term of endearment and by the 1970s was flipped completely as \"nigga\".",
"Also, this is not new. ",
"Homosexuals do it with \"fag\".\nWomen do it with \"bitch\".\nLatinos do it with \"beaner\".",
"The reason \"nigga\" ended up being something that white kids in Kansas started using was because of their infatuation with Black culture through hip hop, namely starting with NWA. Even little blonde Johnny understands that \"nigga\" is just slang for \"someone I consider a close friend\", as is \"beaner\", \"fag\"and \"bitch\" when used by the proper people in the proper circles. \nBut because there is no way to \"own\" a word, nigga took off and became a world wild phenomenon. Everyone loves to pretend they are cool, and hip hop artists were and still are the epitome of cool. ",
"And its not a culture defining reference. Its a small segment that essentially got blown up and embraced by young white boys and scared their parents. ",
"To flip an oppression word and only use it with your closest friends as a way to show camaraderie is saying \"Look, only YOU can call me this. OUR inner circle.\"",
"I find it hilarious that people have a problem separating the N word from Nigga. They are two totally separate words with totally different meanings. I don't see academics having a problem with their, they're or there.",
"Hope that helps. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvri2q",
"comment_text": [
"NO...Nword and Nigga are NOT the same thing. Nigga DERIVED from Nword, but they are VERY clearly two totally different words with two totally different INTENTS and meanings.",
"Nigga is a universal word for friend \"What up my nigga!\"\nNword is a derogatory term for a black person",
"Its seriously not rocket science. ",
"White males who don't have many good friends of color will never, ever understand this. ",
"And if you do..show them my post and they will laugh and tell you I am telling you the truth 100%.",
"And you are another white guy who doesnt respect America's evil nature with the N word. Show me where beaner, bitch, and fag were used while enslaving millions upon millions of people that were used to build America for nothing by bible thumping rich white men who were too lazy to do it themselves. Whats wrong wit our society where you DONT think its a problem?",
"Additionally, blacks don't call each other N word as a form of endearment. They call each other NIGGA; like how Latinos use beaner, women use bitch, gays use fag. Hence no reason to use it at all. But hey man...your way of thinking is just showing like crazy.",
"A lot of you white guys already have predetermined ways of thinking about this shit. Race is more touchy for you all than it is for everyone else. Go watch Tim Wise ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvrvxa",
"comment_text": [
"Why do you keep calling me white? And why do you use white male as an insult? You're either racist or self hating. Take your pick."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcpic",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not white. Your insistence on this point proves your aggressive ignorance much better than I ever could. I just love it when you morons dig your own graves."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5:how can babies scream and shout so long without damaging their vocal chords etc.?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sbda1
| 17
| true
| false
| 0.77
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvt203",
"comment_text": [
"Evolution.",
"The babies who didn't cry when they were hungry or cold or in pain, or were unable to cry long enough to get help died and their weak vocal chords died with them. It's also why a baby crying is one of the most annoying sounds imaginable - a baby whose cries were soothing would not wake its parents and it would not get the help it needs. "
],
"score": 38
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvt2dx",
"comment_text": [
"Wow, that was fast. Thanks!"
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvuh5t",
"comment_text": [
"I just had a baby girl yesterday. I find the crying sound amazing...so far :) The nurse here at the hospital said that the crying help build the babys lungs. So crying is good."
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvviwi",
"comment_text": [
"It can. Emma Stone got her raspy voice from continuous crying as a baby. ",
"http://www.celebuzz.com/2011-08-04/emma-stone-explains-her-husky-voice-on-letterman-video/"
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvtoof",
"comment_text": [
"To expand on OP's question, is there anything about a baby's vocal chords that changes over time? I couldn't imagine myself screaming at the top of my lungs for any prolonged time (then again, I haven't tried lately)."
],
"score": 4
}
|
||
ELI5: gross income
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sbcku
| 6
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvsvu8",
"comment_text": [
"If you make $10 per hour and you work 40 hours per week, your gross income is $400 for that week. ",
"Net income would be what you actually take home from that paycheck."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvsxeb",
"comment_text": [
"Gross income is the earnings you make before federal, state, city taxes, insurance or any other deductions are taken out of your pay check.\nEx. You earn $10.00 per hour and you worked 40 hours. Your gross is $400.00 ( $10.00 x 40 ). Start deducting the above items and let's say the taxes and insurance add up to $100.00, your net or take home pay is $300.00 \n($400.00 - $100.00 = $300.00 )\nMake sense?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvswpt",
"comment_text": [
"Gross income is everything you make before you give any of it to anyone. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvsxp8",
"comment_text": [
"All of the money you earn before taxes and any other expenses. So if you earn $100 and taxes are 10 percent your gross income is $100 and your net income, what you get after taxes and other expenses, would be $90. The other expenses include things like social security and medicaid (if you're American)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvvbwp",
"comment_text": [
"Not cool. Jokes are not allowed, and jokes that can mislead someone who doesn't know better are even worse."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:Why does Wikipedia not host ads?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sbvra
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
And by ads I mean non-intrusive, sidebar ads.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw14rf",
"comment_text": [
"not pester it's userbase with ads.",
"They seem ok with pestering its user base with fundraisers, I don't see how ads are much different."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw14rf",
"comment_text": [
"not pester it's userbase with ads.",
"They seem ok with pestering its user base with fundraisers, I don't see how ads are much different."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvygt9",
"comment_text": [
"The Wikimedia foundation does not want advertising on the site out of principal. They believe introducing advertisements would go against their core message of spreading free knowledge."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvyr1d",
"comment_text": [
"It would at least raise the potential perception, if not the actual case, that editorial policy could be swayed by the money that advertisers bring in. Can you really write an article which lays out bad things a company does, if that company can buy or withdraw advertising? Can companies sway the content on the site if they pay enough?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw13r9",
"comment_text": [
"Let's say Apple paid Wikipedia millions of dollars for ads.",
"Then a story breaks about child labor abuses in Chinese iPad factories. Is Wikipedia going to be able to document that controversy impartially? Even if they do, are its readers going to believe they are being impartial?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What happens to all the single-use throwaway accounts on Reddit?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sbvy2
| 10
| true
| false
| 0.86
|
Do they ever get recycled? How many of the registered users of Reddit are throwaways?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw2crm",
"comment_text": [
"perhaps if you had a \"throwaway\" mode, where your posts could not be traced back to your account? Or a off-site account where you requested a throwaway and you were given a password that was changed after 5 minutes."
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw9mu8",
"comment_text": [
"If this was a feature of Reddit gold I would buy Reddit gold for myself almost every month. C'mon Reddit, TAKE MY MONEY!"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwan33",
"comment_text": [
"That means one day there just won't be any decent names available. --- clownpenis.fart"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwan33",
"comment_text": [
"That means one day there just won't be any decent names available. --- clownpenis.fart"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw1bsk",
"comment_text": [
"I wish there would be an official one, but losers would probably use it to spam :/"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
As a naive, optimistic 25 year-old who's never gone through serious shit in live, how does "drowning your sorrows" with alcohol actually work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sc0bm
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvzriu",
"comment_text": [
"Cannot sleep sobor because your mind keeps running which keeps you awake. With a bottle of your favorite alcohol you can drink to the point that you pass out drunk and actually get some sort of sleep. Wake up and your sorrows are still there, but you at least drown them enough to get some shut eye."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw06ru",
"comment_text": [
"When you are under a lot of stress, anxiety builds until it is difficult to do anything but endlessly worry about your problems. Alcohol is an crude anti-anxiety drug that allows you to self medicate."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw0688",
"comment_text": [
"Well drinking alcohol let's you forget about all the soul crushing problems in your life that occupy your thoughts every waking moment. For just a few hours you forget about the crippling debt your in, the family problems, the no job, etc and get some sleep. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw04eq",
"comment_text": [
"I'm jealous as fuck, OP. ",
"EDIT: Oh, and ",
"/u/thanksforyourpost",
" nailed it. Sometimes life hurts so much that you cannot find peace. Not to think, not to breathe and not to sleep. Alcohol allows you to tap out for a short while. Gasp for a bit of air. A tiny bit of peace of mind. And a nights sleep. But it's always there in the morning. And usually with a vengeance. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw14l4",
"comment_text": [
"It replaces feelings of pain with feelings of emptiness. Some people find emptiness to be preferable. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5- Why does it take substantially longer to climax when standing up versus when laying down.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sc1m2
| 36
| true
| false
| 0.8
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw0c92",
"comment_text": [
"when youre standing, you are using a substantial amount of blood supply to hold your balance and your weight. when youre lying down, you have more blood (and oxygen) to focus on your boner and feeling the pleasure making it easier to climax."
],
"score": 24
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwakgb",
"comment_text": [
"Gonna side with this guy. Ever stood up in the middle of a fap? All the blood rushes to your legs and your stiffy gets a little squishy"
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw6pri",
"comment_text": [
"It does?"
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw6q87",
"comment_text": [
"No, if this same question was posted there, it's a mere coincidence. "
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwanwz",
"comment_text": [
"Good for edging. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do flights between states in the US typically cost in the hundreds of dollars while you can get flights between countries in Europe for less that $100?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sbm10
| 55
| true
| false
| 0.82
|
I know the cheap flights in Europe are on crappier planes, I've flown EasyJet, but why is there no US equivalent?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvvptp",
"comment_text": [
"When you fly in the US, you have a choice of a few airlines. You can select the major ones (American, United, Delta, Continental, US Air), the mid-range specialized ones with limited destinations (Alaska Air, Hawaiian Airlines), or the budget ones (Southwest, Jet Blue). What do these have in common? They are ALL US based airlines. In Europe, they have an open-air policy in which airlines from other countries can fly you to places outside of their country. This means more routes, more competition, and lower fares. Foreign-based airlines can't fly domestic routes in the US. In Europe, they can. This means more distance for less money and competition means more options to popular cities.",
"Another factor for US airlines are the laws which put a heavy burden on the airline industry. Current laws limit foreign based ownership and how current airlines operate in the world. For many US airlines, this limits their ability to compete in the global airline industry. This means higher costs for US airlines, lower employment, and higher fares for consumers. European airlines have more freedom to compete and can keep their costs lower for operations."
],
"score": 50
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvyf1u",
"comment_text": [
"I think it mainly comes down to two things:",
"a) They've got an excellent train system. We hardly have one at all. And every time we try to start building one, some people (like Republican governors) fight it so hard it barely gets anywhere.",
"b) Europe has lots of super low cost airlines, and some of them do a really shitty job, but people keep flying them because they're so cheap. They tend to cut a ",
" of corners. Many of them can't book connecting flights with other airlines, they may charge you extra for things you'd consider ridiculous, some of them are totally okay with just cancelling flights on a whim (not for weather, or air traffic delays, or malfunction, but just because they decide at the last moment they'd make more money not flying that flight) and not giving passengers any better option than \"fly three days from now\", etc. But their competition lowers prices."
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvwdw6",
"comment_text": [
"I would imagine it's much less about competition with other airlines than it is competition with the train system."
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvvmhm",
"comment_text": [
"I understand that, but when you compare flights between similar distances you're still paying much more in the US."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwaxc0",
"comment_text": [
"Uh...they do. So does Emirates.",
"So, you know, way to be both ignorant ",
" racist."
],
"score": 5
}
|
|
ELI5 Why we close our eyes when we experience pleasure?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sc407
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
E.g. really good food, sexual pleasure (sex, masturbating)
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw3puq",
"comment_text": [
"Why the hell is this eli5 downvoted?i sometimes really don't get it how it works on reddit. That s a fair question goddammit even if i don't know the exact answer"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw0v3i",
"comment_text": [
"That, and isolating one sense heightens it. So by eliminating our sense of sight, our sense of taste or touch gets more in tune."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw6hee",
"comment_text": [
"This. No science. Just experience. ",
"Sauce: I've experienced pleasure."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw0rc5",
"comment_text": [
"lack of distraction."
],
"score": 0
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw8txi",
"comment_text": [
"I know this because of Ned's Declassified! There was episode where Ned was trying to sneak out of the room, so he stole the teacher's glasses, but the teacher heard him, because being blind for so long made him develop an amazing sense of hearing :D"
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
ELI5: What makes some people homosexual ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sc50z
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
What is it that makes people gay ?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw15t6",
"comment_text": [
"We do not know. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw2e7o",
"comment_text": [
"It's true. We really don't know what causes it. The best we can tell is that it's a combination of genetic, prenatal and environmental factors."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw0w3i",
"comment_text": [
"The liking of the same gender."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw5o3r",
"comment_text": [
"What we do know is that even if it were a choice, it would still be wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, even (or particularly) religious discrimination."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw17pq",
"comment_text": [
":O"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do some counties actively participate in whaling?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1scenx
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
I was in Norway and whale meat was expensive and tasted horrible (in my opinion). Do they still do it for the oil? Is it just a cultural thing? A developed taste? I would understand if it was a mass food supply for the poor but it was the most expensive thing on the menu at the steak/seafood place i ate at and tasted like rubber. Thank you!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw3rct",
"comment_text": [
"Some tribes participate in it as well. I would say it is a cultural thing. Though, they are limited to how many whales. The method is traditional as well, except they have to start catching it, once caught hurry up and shoot it, finish catching it. There is whale meat buried in traditionally made underground cellars from over a decade ago too.",
"source: I am a Native American who's tribe hails from Alaska. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw3wsy",
"comment_text": [
"Yea, the cultural aspect makes sense, not the commercial aspect though. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw4be7",
"comment_text": [
"Commercial whaling is insane."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzxue2",
"comment_text": [
"Commercial whaling (which only happens in Norway and Iceland officially) is viable enough. They harvest a couple hundred whales a year, well within what the population can handle, and sell to those who wants it. I fail to see a problem."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw5qx9",
"comment_text": [
"Good answer none the less."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How the US education system works
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1scgdz
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.29
|
Living in the UK, I'm constantly at a loss when it comes to understanding how the American Education system works, could you explain how it progresses from 'Kindergarten' to 'College/University'
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw4xpz",
"comment_text": [
"So your average American starts out in Pre-School. Usually a private on (mine was at a church) I don't think they are expensive and they are really just to socialize your kids with others. It's a good idea, is fun for them and gives the parents a bit of a break, win-win all around. This is optional and many kids don't go.",
"Step 2 is kindergarten. Basically the beginning of your long expierence in the public educational system. Again it is a lot about socializing and interaction with others. It's either full-time or part-time generally. You also get recess (free time outdoors)",
"Grades 1-3 Are ",
" most important years of your education. Learning the basics, reading, writing and some math. This is also the time, along with Kindergarten where you begin to learn about discipline, rules and behaviors. As well as getting exposed to illness, actually. This is more personal and maybe not intentional by the educational system, but I found I got sick a lot in grades 1-3 (it's not \"grade 1\" like in Canada, it's first grade, and so on) so that follows in line with socialization but in a different way.",
"Grades 4-6 are a little more advanced. Less recess, more math, a little bit of science, more reading, more writing. This is also the beginning of \"sexual education\" which is pretty poor here in the US. You learn that girls and boys are different, what sex is and those feelings etc. It's uncomfortable for everyone at the time.",
"I should add that some elementary schools can be k-12 or k-8. It's varies a lot here.",
"Grades 7-9. Middle School or junior high, they can have different grades in them (some have 6-8. some have just 7 and 8 or 7-9) This is probably the worst time for kids in terms of education. Puberty is hitting, kids are developing a sense of who they are, what their interests are and how to cope with certain emotional problems, as well as dealing with the fact that not everyone is the same. People have problems and kids are going to fall by the wayside. It'll get worse it high school too.",
"Anyways, in middle school you get what you get in high school. 6+ periods of class a day, usually lasting around an hour. No recess, classes are often not associated with one another (IE the teachers do no coerce) and actual tests about actual subjects that are a little more specific than \"math.\" You also further your sexual \"education\" and develop stronger friendships and people become a little less nice and start to from groups and circle of friends, excluding some, including others. This is also the beginning of group work (at least for me) an annoying and often used way of teaching. Getting a group of kids to do a project and the idea is they will develop skills on how to work together and be less selfish. I hated it but some like it. ",
"Middle school is also where they start to teach History. Why? Because kids in elementary school have a difficult time understand that length of time and their relation to it, so it's pretty useless to tell them about it. And cartoons do a great job in America teaching kids about some of the cool stuff about America (Johnny Appleseed, Benedict Arnold, Paul Revere etc.) ",
"On to the most iconic portion of any young American's life. High School.",
"High School is an interesting and dynamic part of our lives in America. You change a lot in those four years. You really develop interests academically (or don't) You understand your teachers a bit more in terms of not just being an authoritarian figure and you get to really flesh out who you are and make a statement about it. Which is why we see goths and stoners and emos and jocks and sluts and nerds etc. People are trying to be individuals in High School they aren't this large blob of kids that are more or less identical, they want to be different and get a lot of attention.",
"As mentioned above, kids begin to fall apart around here. Family trouble, drug abuse, poor grades, apathy, severe teenage angst likely caused by the aforementioned family trouble and physical/sexual abuse come into play here and wreck some kids lives. Usually your average class has 1-2 kids like this (depending on where you live) It's sad in hindsight especially if you do well.",
"I may be describing it kind of like some test, where some pass and some do not. That's what High School education is, it's a processing plant that processes kids through it. If you do well, shut up and keep your head down, you get out just fine, and if you don't, you may not. It's pretty simple but problematic at times.",
"Moving on, classes can vary in difficulty and there are some choices to be made your junior and senior (3rd and 4th) year in terms of what you want to take. Your freshman and Sophomore (1st and 2nd) are basically decided for you. Highschool is where homework becomes important and you ",
" be responsible for your work. But having seen the \"inner-belly\" of the system that is an American Highschool, you can really just kind of drag along, get a diploma and move on. That doesn't mean you'll have a great life but you can do it like that.",
"More on the social side of stuff: kids are assholes at this point. Especially to teachers (the bad ones) I know I said earlier that they understand them more, but in a negative way (IE they realize how little power teachers have and they can abuse them.) They are pretty un-caring of other peoples feelings besides their own and their friends. It can be a rough time if you don't have a lot of friends and don't socialize well.",
"I may be making this a bit too negative. But that was my experience and observations.",
"On to College: ",
"I'm only a freshman but college in the US is pretty fun. Yes it costs an arm and a leg, it's competitive and decided by very few things (SAT's; a test, GPA, etc) but it's fun. You also feel like people want to help you do well or enjoy what you are learning about rather than in high school where it is just a job for them.",
"In college you pick a \"major\" or a certain subject to study, study it for four years and get a degree. Then you can go to a specific school for it (law school pre-med, dentistry etc.) or go on in life with a bachelors.",
"I could explain more but I'm quite tired. I hope you get something about how it works.",
" These are ",
" experiences. It isn't the same everywhere, the US is a big-ass place with lots of differences in every facet of life, don't expect it to be the same. It just won't be."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw52ws",
"comment_text": [
"The Wikipedia page",
" for education in the US. ",
"The Wikipedia page for K-12",
".",
"Preschool",
" and ",
"Pre-K",
" are optional. ",
"Kindergarten",
" is mandatory in some places. 1st - 12th grade is mandatory. ",
"There are public and private schools.",
"Public schools are funded by the government, although you have to pay for meals (unless you qualify to get them for free). Some public schools are great and some are godawful. Because it's the government there are stricter rules about what they can make the students do.",
"Private schools are funded, well, privately. You have to pay tuition to send your kid(s) there. Some private schools are religious. Private schools generally have a better reputation; that does not mean an education at a private school is necessarily better. Because they are private they can do a lot more vis-a-vis making students do things.",
"Ages:",
"Preschool: Ages 3–4",
"Pre-K: Ages 4–5",
"Kindergarten: Ages 5–6",
"1st Grade: Ages 6–7",
"2nd Grade: Ages 7–8",
"3rd Grade: Ages 8–9",
"4th Grade: Ages 9–10",
"5th Grade: Ages 10–11",
"6th Grade: Ages 11–12",
"7th Grade: Ages 12–13",
"8th Grade: Ages 13–14",
"9th Grade: Ages 14–15",
"10th Grade: Ages 15–16",
"11th Grade: Ages 16–17",
"12th Grade: Ages 17–18",
"University and college are often used interchangeably (even though they have different specific meanings). In the American vernacular it's common to say \"I'm going to college\", it's less common to say \"I'm going to a university\" and it's very unusual to say \"I'm going to university\". A college awards a ",
"Bachelors degree",
" or a so-called \"4 year degree\".",
"You have to pay tuition to attend a private or a public college (unless you get enough scholarship/grant money). Private colleges are more expensive, but they often have more prestige. (This is a gross oversimplification.) Public colleges are partially funded by the government so they're cheaper.",
"Technically a university has colleges. For example, the University of Reddit might have: the Liberal Arts College, the College of Business, the College of Arts and Sciences, and so on. But if you ask someone where they go to college -- again, American vernacular usage of the word college -- they would say \"Reddit\" or \"the University of Reddit\". They wouldn't say \"the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Reddit\".",
"And there are community colleges. These award ",
"Associate degrees",
" or so-called \"2 year degrees\". Community colleges are incredibly cheaper than a 4 year college. Many people go to a community college for a year or two in order to save money; they earn credits then transfer them when they transfer to a 4 year college. Many other people go to a community college because they only want or need a 2 year degree.",
"Community colleges are looked down on, but mostly by people who are 18-22ish. It's the same phenomenon where a 17 year old might mock a 15 year old for being immature; they're exposing their own insecurity. Thus, if you hear someone refer to \"real\" college then they're contrasting community college with a 4 year college. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw5z6f",
"comment_text": [
"Cheers mate!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw4qkt",
"comment_text": [
"Search before submitting with keywords from your topic. The search box is in the upper right corner of the subreddit."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw5wz1",
"comment_text": [
"9th is freshman year of high school for the vast majority of the US. Only very oddly structured districts have 9th as a part of Jr High/Middle School. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
How to bring money from out of the US into the border without paying taxes?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7c6u
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
I have family out of the US. If they want to gift me large amounts of cash, what is/ if there is a way to bring large quantities of money into the US without paying taxes? What if it is an inheritance?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdupjob",
"comment_text": [
"A loophole, huh? Gifts up to $14,000 won't have any tax consequences. Have the money broken into units of $14,000.",
"Have the first $14,000 transferred to you before the end of 2013.",
"Have the second $14,000 transferred to you in 2014",
"This first set of tips is legal, and won't cause much of a fuss. This next set of tips is illegal, but often goes unnoticed. ",
"Have a chunk transferred to someone in the US that you trust during 2013, then have them transfer it to you during 2013.",
"Have that same person receive another 14k during 2014, then have them transfer it you during 2014.",
"repeat with as many people as you need, using both the 2013 and 2014 calendar years to separate the transfers. ",
"Obviously if you do this too much, it will attract attention, so be modest in your transfers. This method isn't legal, and I want to be clear that I'm not encouraging you to use it. It's both fraud and tax evasion. Possibly even money laundering. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdum6gj",
"comment_text": [
"What you are describing is called smuggling. It's a crime. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumqud",
"comment_text": [
"Well that's what I'm trying to ask. Thought maybe there's a way to electronically transfer money or some law or loop hole."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumpc2",
"comment_text": [
"It is 10k per person right? I need to find like 20 friends that want to go on a trip"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumrw4",
"comment_text": [
"As a broke university student, I want to be your friend. You could do that, but if you get audited at anytime or if you're planning on spending the money on something that is easily traceable (like a house) you will run into problems.",
"Edit: Not saying that you should try to beat the system. If you want to bring in $200,000 like you're talking about it is important to go through the proper channels."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How can time travel be possible?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7cha
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.54
|
How, in theory, can time travel be possible? Wouldn't every moment from all time be happening at the same time in order for us to go backwards or forwards? My husband has tried explaining it to me but I still don't get it.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumiiu",
"comment_text": [
"Consider this: we are able to traverse in three dimensions (physical space) easily despite the fact that we are only able to occupy a single point in space at once. We simply reposition ourselves to a new location and we've moved our bodies through space. We don't need to be able to have contact with all of space to move to an adjacent spot.",
"Now, what if space-time is all those three dimensions of space plus one more of time and we don't need to be able to experience all the moments in time in order to move, we just need to be able to shift where were are in time the same way that we shift in space.",
"You are actually moving in space-time ",
". Even at \"rest\", your body moves along with the Earth through space and we are all constantly traveling through time - at the rate of one second per second. We can only move forwards through time at a normal rate; it's the current limitations of ourselves. But, we could only move so fast until we built fantastic machines like planes and rockets that eventually allowed us to move so fast that we could escape the pull of gravity and go to the moon. Perhaps, one day, we will be able to construct a device which allows us to move through space-time as easily as we move through just space. ",
"It may never come, but it's fun to consider the possibilities sometimes."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduna32",
"comment_text": [
"First of all, I barely comprehend what you are writing. But thank you for trying :). What I don't understand is this: ",
"Lets say I travel back in time to when I got married. I can see myself standing on the beach saying \"I do\" to my husband. If I can travel back to see what is happening, ",
" the time I came from is still traveling forward, then aren't all moments of time happening at the same time, forever? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunjbw",
"comment_text": [
"Well, we really don't know. A great number of scientists think that time travel is impossible, and we can only guess.",
"Time travel in movies suggest that it would depend just how you travel through space-time and how quickly. ",
"If you think about yourself going down a road - if you walk, everything moves slowly. If you were in a car, many things close to you are a blur. If you were aboard a rocket, it may as well seem instantaneous and you'd barely perceive anything between when you started and when you ended.",
"We can speculate a lot, but it's anyone's guess whether you'd experience time as you travel forwards and backwards or if you'd only see a big blur. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunsrm",
"comment_text": [
"Why are space and time connected? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunzdr",
"comment_text": [
"Imagine a single point that we extend out to form a line. If we travel just on this line, we are moving in one dimension (length of the lines).",
"Extend this line out and we form a plane - a flat surface with width and length. We can travel along the surface and we are moving in two dimensions.",
"Extend the plane out and you get space. We travel through space in three dimensions of length, width, and height. ",
"Finally, as we travel through space, we require a certain amount of time to get from one point to another. We are traveling through time - the fourth dimension. Moving through space and time is moving through space-time, all four dimensions. ",
"This is the easiest way I can think of to show that our three-dimensions of space and time are connected in space-time (all four dimensions)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Why would increasing the minimum wage "kill the economy" according to companies making record profits?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7dnb
| 8
| true
| false
| 0.71
|
I do unterstand (does not mean share!) the concerns, especially concerning small businesses, but why do companies that make record profits for everyone but their employees get away with essentially saying they would "go out of business"? Every 5 year old can see there has to be something wrong with that story...
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumvaw",
"comment_text": [
"Most companies certainly wouldn't go out of business, though I don't know of any company that's claimed it would. But there's definitely an argument to be made that it would hurt the economy.",
"Firms would lay off workers and produce less, increasing unemployment.",
"As firms produce less, they also tend to raise their prices. This would offset a portion of minimum wage employees' benefit under an increased minimum wage.",
"On top of cutting costs unrelated to labor when possible, firms would also attempt to minimize the increase in labor costs as much as possible. As an example, I take it you've heard about companies cutting full-time employees to part-time to avoid paying for employees' health insurance under the new Obamacare requirements. Those cuts would likely expand, as part of firms' efforts to cut costs, if the minimum wage was raised.",
"Outsourcing would increase, further increasing domestic unemployment."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunona",
"comment_text": [
"firms would lay off workers",
"I don't think they could. They're mostly operating at minimal staff to service their customers as is, aren't they? "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduo8i8",
"comment_text": [
"Depends on the business. Many businesses require quite large amounts of employees to keep up, so there is only so much you can cut before it starts to heavily damage your production abilities.",
"You need a certain level of workers to maintain efficiency, if you drop below that, you will lose production and sales at far, far higher levels than whatever you save up front on labor costs."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduslq0",
"comment_text": [
"Companies having to deal with higher labors costs, are less likely to hire new entrants into the work force. Those new, usually young, people are missing work place opportunities useful for commanding higher pay in the future.",
"Food service is still one of the few areas in the economy where new young workers can get a start. They aren't going to be hired at the union steel-mills or by GM, adults are even delivering newspapers, landscaping companies are cutting lawns.",
"Higher pay by law means fewer opportunities. That means, some more people get NO PAY. Which creates more poverty, more crime, more violence, and worse, more taxation to house criminals, which offsets any pay increases people are getting by law, because by law they have to pay more in taxes to counter the problems the narrow minded short sighted law created. ",
"Minimum wages laws are about buying CHEAP votes now, with expensive costs for the future. It is NOT about good economics.",
"Now, these \"record profits\" are not record yields. The dollar is worth less, so the numbers are higher, but the percentages are miserable. Earning $2 billion if profit might seem like a lot, but not if it took $50 billion in investment and $50 billion in borrowing (with interest) to earn that lousy 2%."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduo919",
"comment_text": [
"In most cases, no. But let's say they are.",
"If they're running optimally (and big companies hire skilled staff to get their production and pricing as close to the optimum as possible), firms will try to make as much profit as possible given the current values of variables they have no control over, like the market price of labor.",
"The optimal (profit-maximizing) amount of stuff they produce and price they sell it for is affected by the cost of labor, though - they'll produce less to compensate for the increased cost of labor, and in turn they'll raise their prices to compensate for the decreased production. Since they'll be producing less, they'll need fewer workers to produce it, so they'll lay off the rest of them or cut their hours.",
"And no, that doesn't mean it only affects the factory workers who physically produce the stuff. Firms who produce goods and then sell them directly to consumers will also base ",
" they produce on the number of cashiers and stockers and other store attendants they can lay off by decreasing production by X amount. Retailers will also lay off employees or reduce hours, since they'll be paying more for their goods, they'll raise prices to compensate, and they'll sell less (and therefore need fewer employees)."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5:How come when I'm inside a closed moving vehicle and I toss something up in the air or jump, it or I don't fly back?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7g2n
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunale",
"comment_text": [
"Because you're moving forwards already with the vehicle. If it accelerated while you were in the air you'd notice. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunbr4",
"comment_text": [
"The sir/ma'am is called the law of inertia. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. You're already moving and you have nothing to stop you from doing so."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunzx6",
"comment_text": [
"Ah, my knowledge in 7th grade science seems to have escaped me. That sounds like an explanation I remember. Thanks!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunm8r",
"comment_text": [
"The theory of relativity explains that everything is relative. There are no universally moving objects and no stationary objects. Only objects that appear that way to you. And all forces are equal whether you're moving or not. That way, if you shined a light while moving at light-speed yourself, the light would still go at light-speed relative to you (instead of just floating there)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdunpiv",
"comment_text": [
"No it wouldn't as due to length contraction if you were going the speed of light space would have no dimension in the direction of travel."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: The speed of light and relativity
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7ipi
| 5
| true
| false
| 1
|
OK, this has been bugging me since high school physics and I didn't get a great answer when I went to university, either. So light can only go 300,000 kilometers per second (technically 299,792.458, in a pure vacuum). It was explained to me that the speed of light is relative, meaning that light cannot go faster than 300,000kps relative to, well... anything? That's sort of my question. The way I remember it being explained was that if the universe was completely empty except for a flashlight, and you turned that flashlight on, light would travel at 300,000 kilometers per second from that light. If that flashlight was moving at 200,000 kilometers per second, the light would still be moving at 300k kps relative to the flashlight, because the flashlight would for all intents and purposes not be moving - it would have nothing to move away from. , if you had a flashlight and a rock, and the flashlight was moving at 200k kps relative to the rock, and the flashlight was turned on, light would move at only 100k kps relative to the flashlight, but 300k kps relative to the rock, because light cannot move faster than 300k kps relative to anything in existence. No problem, that's easy. Until you come to the real universe, where we have trillions of galaxies containing trillions of stars and black holes all moving at very, very great speeds away from and sometimes towards each other. Above all, those black holes are ejecting superheated plasma at near-luminal velocities. Let's simplify that to just two black holes, both standing still, but ejecting matter at 290k kps - in opposite directions. OK, first of all, we seem to have violated relativity - as I understand it - and are now facing separation speeds of 580,000 kilometers per second between plasma particles. Moreover, those plasma particles are very hot and emitting radiation - at the very least infrared radiation, which is all a form of light. How does light move at all in this instance, never mind relative to each jet of particles, or each black hole? And if things are that complicated with two black holes with opposing poles of matter ejection, how the hell does move in the universe, never mind light?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdupn0y",
"comment_text": [
"I think you are missing a key part of the theorem of relativity here. That is: ",
". So, no matter how fast you are moving the velocity of light is still ",
" (300,000 kps).",
"So lets consider your example:",
"if you had a flashlight and a rock, and the flashlight was moving at 200k kps relative to the rock, and the flashlight was turned on",
"Your conclusion is actually wrong, nobody will observe the light to travel at 100k kps. In this case a person riding on the flash light would see the light traveling away from the flashlight at ",
". A person sitting on the rock would also see light traveling away from the flashlight at ",
". Light travels at the same speed for ALL observers.",
"Now I imagine that you are asking, how can this be??!?! And the answer is where we get into the mindfuck of relativity.",
"For this situation to happen (and as far as we know this ",
" what happens in the real world) both people must measure light's velocity to be 300,000 ",
". This is possible because space and time it relative to each person. 1 second for the person on the flashlight is NOT equal to 1 second for the person on the rock. Also 1 metre as measure by the person on the flashlight is NOT equal to one metre as measured by the person on the rock.",
"Even thought they are moving with respect to each other they both measure 300,000 Kilometers per second, ",
".",
".....",
"Let that sink in a bit. ",
".....",
"Ok, so to reiterate: time and space (seconds and metres) are relative to the frame of reference you are in. But the speed of light is constant for all frames of reference. ",
"PS. Lastly, in regards to light 'slowing down' this only happens when light travels through a medium, for example air, or glass. But a beam of light traveling through glass has the same velocity ",
" no matter how fast they are moving compared to the glass."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduoips",
"comment_text": [
"Let's simplify that to just two black holes, both standing still, but ejecting matter at 290k kps - in opposite directions. OK, first of all, we seem to have violated relativity - as I understand it - and are now facing separation speeds of 580,000 kilometers per second between plasma particles. Moreover, those plasma particles are very hot and emitting radiation - at the very least infrared radiation, which is all a form of light. How does light move at all in this instance, never mind relative to each jet of particles, or each black hole?",
"If you were standing on one of those plasma particles moving at ~.95c, the ones going the opposite direction would ",
" appear to be moving at 2x .95c. Velocities don't actually add like simple vectors, relativity tells us it is more complicated than that. The formula for velocities moving in the same or opposite direction is (v1+v2)/(1+ ( v1*v2 / c",
" )). So you would see the other material moving at about 0.998c. Light will appear to move at c no matter how fast you are moving, no matter what it's relative to."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdupx6c",
"comment_text": [
"anyone who measures the speed of light with their own instruments, will find it 300k/sec. From outside, it may look like they should measure a different value, because you expect them to measure the separation speed as seen from outside. answer to this is that the measuring instruments (clocks, rulers) change so that anyone always measures it 300k/sec."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdup3zn",
"comment_text": [
"No, you have this wrong. If there was a flashlight travelling at .3C (³/₁₀ the speed of light) towards the rock, The flashlight would see light travelling away from it and arriving at the rock at the speed of light relative to it, and the rock would see the light leaving the flashlight and arriving at the rock at the speed of light. The speed of light is a constant, everywhere. Light cannot travel ",
" than the speed of light either.",
"What gives? Time, and space. The flashlight would see the rock much closer to it, and would experience time at a faster rate. The rock would see the flashlight further away, and time would tick by at a slower rate.",
"It is this that is the realization that was Special Relativity. It is the speed of light that is the constant, not distance and time."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduvxje",
"comment_text": [
"Nope. The speed of light is not relative. Thats the whole point."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: How does bowling scoring work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7jhk
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.8
|
I've tried too long to figure out the arithmetic behind this, how do you add ? ? I figure strikes ultimately add up to 25/frame in a perfect game.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduol7g",
"comment_text": [
"Yep. And it's not related to how many beers you downed while you were waiting for your turn."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduogfg",
"comment_text": [
"open frame(no spares or strikes) are worth the amount of pins knocked down.",
"spares are worth 10+ whatever you get on your next roll.",
"so lets say, opening a game you roll ",
"9/ 90",
"you'd get 19 points in the first frame and a total score of 28 after 2",
"strikes are worth 10 plus whatever you get on your next 2 rolls.",
"so lets say you open a game with ",
"x x 90",
"you'd get 29 in the frame with the first strike then you'd get 19 in the frame with the second strike and 9 in the third frame for a score of 57"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdupuiy",
"comment_text": [
"Candlepin bowling (popular in New England and the Canadian maritimes) has slightly different scoring. There you get three rolls per frame, but it only counts as a spare if you knock all ten pins in the first two rolls. If it takes you all three, the frame is simply worth 10 and you don't get the first-roll-of-the-next-frame-counts-twice bonus. (One other difference is that the downed pins do not get cleared between rolls until the next frame!)",
"It's much more difficult than tenpin bowling. There were something like 50,000 perfect games (300) recorded in tenpin last year. No one has ever broken 250 in candlepin; the highest score ever recorded was 245."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2gyq",
"comment_text": [
"10 frames. Each frame is worth 10 points be default. You get 2 throws to make the ten points.",
"If you make all 10 points in the first throw, it doubles the next two throws points (for a maximum of 30 points on that frame). If you make all 10 points, it doubles the points of your next throw.",
"So.",
"10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (plus 2 bonus rolls possibility).",
"If you get a \"Strike\" on the first throw, it doubles the next two throws making it:",
"30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (+2) \nbut this is cumulative so:\n30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30 (if you got two more strikes)",
"A \"spare\" works in a similar way. So let's say you knock down 9 pins on your first throw, and always know down the last pin on your second throw:",
"19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, (9) "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduoiy4",
"comment_text": [
"If you get fewer than 10 pins between your two throws, you just get 1 point for each pin.",
"If you take two throws to get all 10 pins (a spare), you get 10 points, plus your next throw counts double.",
"If you get all 10 pins on your first throw (a strike), you get 10 points, plus your next ",
" throws count double.",
"If you get a strike or spare in frame 10, you get one (for a spare) or two (for a strike) extra throws to make up for the fact that there's no \"next throw\" to be doubled. Those throws only count once, though, not twice.",
"So if you get three strikes in a row, the first of them counts as 30 points - 10 for that throw, then 10 extra for each of the next two strikes. A \"perfect game,\" a score of 300, requires 12 strikes in a row - one in each frame, plus the two extra throws in the 10th frame."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why is water perceived to taste like 'nothing'?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7rt0
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduqztp",
"comment_text": [
"Water does not stimulate any of our taste or scent detectors."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdur0jr",
"comment_text": [
"Yes, you basically just repeated my question. I'm asking why/how that is the way it is."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdur33e",
"comment_text": [
"I'm asking why/how that is the way it is.",
"How: Because water does not trigger any taste buds.",
"Why: Because our saliva is mostly water, so we'd quickly become desensitized to the taste, since we'd taste it 24/7. Thus we did not evolve an ability to taste water."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdur41c",
"comment_text": [
"That's a good one. Thanks."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdur1mx",
"comment_text": [
"deleted ",
" ",
" "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: The importance of personal liberty
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7sxb
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdurljh",
"comment_text": [
"Many people would reason that living as a slave with food at the table is less meaningful than living free and having to fight for your bread.",
"Not sure how else to answer this sorry."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdurer1",
"comment_text": [
"Could you expand on this question? Not sure what you are asking"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdurg8d",
"comment_text": [
"i guess what i mean is why is it valued so highly. it seems many people would prefer it to having food on the table."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdushh0",
"comment_text": [
"precisely."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdusnka",
"comment_text": [
"why do you not like jail?\nyou're fed, have access to showers, clean laundry, books, phones (for a price) and tv...",
"we are meant to be free"
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
What would happen if the minimum wage was $22/hr and it HAD to increase at the same rate as inflation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7sl6
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
Basically, I'm asking about the economic consequences. Would it be an overall positive/negative thing to occur, or would it be somewhere in the middle? Would it help get rid of income inequality? Share your thoughts everyone.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdurmxj",
"comment_text": [
"It's nigh impossible to say what the long term net effect would be, because the economy has a LOT of moving parts. You can say what some of the effects would probably be, but if anyone tells you they KNOW what ALL of the effects would be, they either have a nobel prize in economics or they're an a-hole know-it-all and probably a card-carrying party loyalist too (both sides are guilty!). ",
"Source: I majored in econ in undergrad... not the best source available but at least I've read a book or two. ",
"That said, here is an abbreviated list of things that might be likely to happen: ",
"-More Unemployment: $22 is about 3x the current federal minimum wage. Could Wal-Mart and McDonalds do with fewer people or shorter hours if their labor costs suddenly went up 300%? You bet they could. Layoffs would probably come into play immediately. Some small businesses might even shut down. In fact, if a business is only marginally profitable or losing money, a wage hike might be the last straw. Keep in mind that even if they're paying $15/hr, this would represent a 50% wage increase for them. Not every place could handle that. You might even see more people axed from small businesses than large.",
"ON THE OTHER HAND: businesses can jack up prices because (some) people have more money to spend. So, it's an ambiguous effect. Will employment go up? Probably not. Will it go down? Probably, hard to say how much. ",
"However, the cuts might not be as bad as some people say. Companies don't tend to employ a lot more people than they need in the first place. They would have to be mighty clever or mighty stupid to try and start operating with 1/3 of their employees over night. ",
"-Even more unemployment: With labor costs permanently increased, firms have an incentive to look for alternatives to labor over time. At first you might see more self-check-out lanes. But firms like BK or McDonalds might also put more effort into robotic fry cooks. Call centers would pour more money into automated phone systems. People might not get laid off overnight, but as soon as companies can find a robotic replacement that costs less than $22 per hour over the lifetime of the machine, they'll go with that. This is also the case now, but the minimum wage being $22 puts 3x more pressure on that process, speeding it up. Ultimately this technology will build on itself and (in my opinion) machines will start pushing people out of the workforce en masse, ultimately resulting in 90% unemployment, sometime in the early 2100s. (okay, that's a bit off-topic but it's my pet topic) ",
"-Fewer people pursuing higher education? With minimum wage that high, there's less incentive to take out debt to go to school. So, you might see people on the fence about school taking up service work or trade jobs. Then again, you might not. There is still significant social pressure to pursue higher education regardless of wage outcomes. ",
"-Increased pressure on immigration: With that high of a minimum wage, who wouldn't want to get a job in the US? People have that much more incentive to come here - legally or not. ",
"-Increased labor law violations, black market activity, etc: When paying less than $22/hr is outlawed, only outlaws will pay less than $22/hr. It's impossible to say how much of this would go on, but let's just say the aforementioned illegal immigrants (as today) will occasionally get stiffed and not be able to complain about it. Businesses that can't really afford to pay that much will also find a way around the law. So you'd see some increase in illegal or off-the-books employment. Don't forget that payroll tax will also go up 3x. This means employers are more likely to try and keep employees unofficial, pay them the $22, and avoid the tax. More strict rules means more rule-breaking. Would be interesting to see the outcome here. ",
"-Higher-priced goods: Even though wages are keyed to inflation (which would probably go up too), companies can now charge more for stuff. Which means that anything you could consider a premium good would get marked up. Your $500 TV is now $750. ",
"-Less obesity?: Although some consumer goods could be marked up in price, basic foodstuffs would still have some downward price pressure because they are commodities and typically compete with each other on price (e.g. grocery store A will try to beat grocery store B by selling stuff cheaper). So people may be able to afford higher quality food. Low food quality is strongly implicated in the rampant obesity among impoverished people... with $22/hr (for those lucky enough to have a job), you can buy a lot more produce and less processed crap. ",
"-Income inequality: same? Income inequality comes from inequality in ownership of capital, not wages. Most of the very, very rich don't get paid in wages, they get paid in dividends, stock options, equities, etc. They make their money through investments. The minimum wage has no effect on that ownership of capital. The super-rich will continue to own the things that make them rich. It would only help superficial income inequality, by bringing the $15,000/year guy closer to the $100,000/year guy... but they're both ridiculously poor compared to the $10,000,000/year guy, who had a salary of $1 but made millions by selling equities and commodities futures. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdusm7z",
"comment_text": [
"Did you even read my comment? Care to point out the flaws or are you just really hot on raising the minimum wage? ",
"Australia is very well-known for having high priced luxury goods. ",
"Obesity is lower in the EU. ",
"Income inequality... is still not great in much of the EU. Where it is different, i'd argue more because of taxation, not minimum wage laws. ",
"Unemployment isn't exactly low in every EU member country (Spain), but Australia is doing pretty well. On the other hand they didn't jack up their minimum wage 3x overnight. ",
"Immigration would still be a factor, I can't see how it could be otherwise. ",
"Labor law violations would be too, again, can't see how that could go down or stay the same. ",
"Employment would not go up overnight. It wouldn't stay the same. I can only imagine that it would go down by some amount. I won't speculate as to how much, but it would be some in the short/mid term. ",
"I also think it would increase the (already quite serious) trend of capital/automation replacing labor. ",
"The typical Econ 101 answer is \"DING! UNEMPLOYMENT!\" which is not wrong, but is very simplistic. As I noted, it's not as simple as \"let's find the intersection of the demand curve and supply curve\", but it does increase labor costs and increase the incentive to cut those costs. Places that currently pay minimum wage do so for a reason. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdurdkh",
"comment_text": [
"You are probably going to get quite a few different answers on this based on people's economic and political views. I'm still really early in to my economics schooling, but IIRC raising minimum wage will create a labor surplus aka higher unemployment. This is due employers being forced to pay workers more than they see fit and a lot of people willing to work for those wages. So, a company is going to hire less people, even though more people are willing to work, to keep up profits; thus increasing unemployment.",
"This is based on my rudimentary understanding of microeconomics so please correct me if I'm wrong!",
"Edit: ",
"Here is a simple graph to illustrate what I'm saying."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdusuww",
"comment_text": [
"Workers in services will be replaced by machines at a faster rate, the more that big corporations need to pay them. This is a problem that becomes more relevant as technology gets more advanced. Today it's quite advanced compared to decades past, and it shows no sign of slowing down. It's not a factor that has had a significant impact on theories of labor in the past, since machines have never been, even in theory, an adequate replacement for an entire human being. But soon they will be!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdutk95",
"comment_text": [
"I have heard of Stiglitz, but I don't think Australia is a good counterexample to the US because their products cost quite a bit more.",
"Example:",
"Game in Australia",
" vs ",
"Game in United States"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: How does cobalt-60 kill a person within a matter of a couple of days or hours (symptoms) and how does that person not contaminate other people, causing them to die as well?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7zs7
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.85
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduw9p7",
"comment_text": [
"Your last remark is correct, you didn't need to strike it out."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdutjil",
"comment_text": [
"Radiation basically messes with your DNA very badly. So badly that it can cause cells to either outright die, or screw things up DNA-wise so bad that they make crazy errors in cell division or just can't divide at all anymore. ",
"All this death accumulates in your system and causes organs to fail and things like that, and it basically just causes your entire system to crash and you die."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduw87e",
"comment_text": [
"When things are 'contaminated with radiation' such as soil and fauna, what they mean is that the objects in question have absorbed or been coated with radioactive-emitting particulates. Much in the same way that people wuote bananas are radioactive, because of minor amounts of radiation-emitting potassium isotopes, normal objects can become radioactive if they are covered in solid particles of radioactive material, like a potassium isotope or a fine powder of uranium.",
"In the case you are talking about, the cobolt-60 was present as just a solid chunk of material. There was no particulate matter to contaminate the individuals. As such, they are not emitting any kind of radioactive particules."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduw87e",
"comment_text": [
"When things are 'contaminated with radiation' such as soil and fauna, what they mean is that the objects in question have absorbed or been coated with radioactive-emitting particulates. Much in the same way that people wuote bananas are radioactive, because of minor amounts of radiation-emitting potassium isotopes, normal objects can become radioactive if they are covered in solid particles of radioactive material, like a potassium isotope or a fine powder of uranium.",
"In the case you are talking about, the cobolt-60 was present as just a solid chunk of material. There was no particulate matter to contaminate the individuals. As such, they are not emitting any kind of radioactive particules."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvtjzx",
"comment_text": [
"At Fukushima radioactive particles were ejected into the air. ",
"In this case, there was solid cobalt in a container. To be contaminated they would need to cobalt to get onto or into their body. They likely have trace amounts of cobalt molecules on their hands where they touched it, but not enough to matter. ",
"To get contaminated they would need to break/shatter the source and breath/eat it or rub the powder all over their body. ",
"Cobalt doesn't induce radiation in humans, so the only way to get contaminated is to get it on you or in you. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Nelson Mandela
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s80z8
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduu4l0",
"comment_text": [
"Lincoln is a better comparison. ",
"Mandela didn't found south africa; he fought to end an unjust social system"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduu8m4",
"comment_text": [
"He may have been reformed, but he was a terrorist who with the ANC pretty much invented new ways of torturing people opposed to there cause (however righteous there cause was), such as \"necklacing\" which a tire would be put around a victim, filled with gas and lit on fire, and slowly burn for about 45min until the victim died from his wounds, that and bombings, he wasn't even close the the saint he is made out to be in the media now, I mean on 31 Jan 1985 he was offered his release from prison by the South African president PW Botha, all he had to do was \"unconditionally reject violence as a political weapon\" and Mandela refused, I just can't put this guy on any kind of pedestal in a era where Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. Were making real progress with non-violence this guy was torturing and murdering people for his cause,",
"Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. At his trial, he had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilising terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela’s MK terrorists. Here are some highlights",
"-Church Street West, Pretoria, on the 20 May 1983",
"-Amanzimtoti Shopping complex KZN, 23 December 1985",
"-Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court, 17 March 1988",
"-Durban Pick ‘n Pay shopping complex, 1 September 1986",
"-Pretoria Sterland movie complex 16 April 1988 – limpet mine killed ANC terrorist M O Maponya instead",
"-Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, 20 May 1987",
"-Roodepoort Standard Bank 3 June, 1988",
"and then became reformed, so all is forgiving in the west."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduu9za",
"comment_text": [
"oh and.... Mandela was friendly with dictators",
"Despite being synonymous with freedom and democracy, Mandela was never afraid to glad hand the thugs and tyrants of the international arena.",
"General Sani Abacha seized power in Nigeria in a military coup in November 1993. From the start of his presidency, in May 1994, Nelson Mandela refrained from publicly condemning Abacha’s actions. Up until the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November 1995 the ANC government vigorously opposed the imposition of sanctions against Nigeria. Shortly before the meeting Mandela’s spokesman, Parks Mankahlana, said that “quiet persuasion” would yield better results than coercion. Even after the Nigerian government announced the death sentences against Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists, during the summit, Mandela refused to condemn the Abacha regime or countenance the imposition of sanctions.",
"Two of the ANC’s biggest donors, in the 1990s, were Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and President Suharto of Indonesia . Not only did Mandela refrain from criticising their lamentable human rights records but he interceded diplomatically on their behalf, and awarded them South Africa ‘s highest honour. Suharto was awarded a state visit, a 21-gun salute, and The Order of Good Hope (gold class).",
"In April 1999 Mandela acknowledged to an audience in Johannesburg that Suharto had given the ANC a total of 60 million dollars. An initial donation of 50 million dollars had been followed up by a further 10 million. The Telegraph ( London ) reported that Gaddafi was known to have given the ANC well over ten million dollars."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfra0",
"comment_text": [
"So kidnapping opponents to the ANC and putting tires filled with gas around there body and igniting it was to inspire hope....gtfo....I guess Bin Laden was inspiring \"hope\" to fellow al qaeda in peshawar during his planned attacks, shit we should have just given him life in prison, let him find the error of his ways and then turn around and honor him, after all he only attacked strategic locations, pentagon, world trade and it was only to punish the west for our continued involvement in Islamic/Arab nation affairs.",
"and furthermore at those bombings, women and children were among casualties, 156 casualties tell me how the fuck a bombing two shopping malls sabotaged government infrastructure????and to top it off a Report from the Bishop Desmond Tutu shows Mandela's wife had accusations by her bodyguard, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, that she had ordered kidnapping and murder. On 29 December 1988, Richardson, who was coach of the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC), which acted as Mrs. Mandela's personal security detail, abducted 14-year-old James Seipei (also known as Stompie Moeketsi) and three other youths from the home of a Methodist minister, Rev. Paul Verryn, claiming she had the youths taken to her home because she suspected the reverend was sexually abusing them. The four were beaten to get them to admit to having had sex with the minister. Seipei was accused of being an informer, and his body later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on 6 January 1989",
"The ANC might have turned there act around, but they were covered in blood, and a good percentage of it was innocent blood, through TERRORIST acts. They wanted to inspire fear in the ruling whites that were oppressing and killing black south Africans, and they did exactly that, The international community wouldn't care what was happening in south africa had it not been for excessive violence occurring, then it made countries take a closer look at the root cause and ultimately sympathize with the plight of the black South Africans.",
"Even if he never killed a single person, but only orchestrated the acts, the same could be said for Osama, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung,President Kemal Ataturk,Prime Minister Benito Mussolini,Prime Minister Antonio de Salazar,Francisco Franco,Prime Minister Ion Antonescu,Ante Pavelic,Gheorghe Gheorghiu,President Tito,President Yakubu Gowon,President Suharto,President Idi Amin,President Mengistu Haile,etc.",
"Ghandi effectively achieved the same goals as the ANC using non violence means to drive out the oppressive british control that was governing them.....and that is a great man, But id be damned if I will put Mandela on the same level as Ghandi, MLK,Baha’u’llah,Dalai Lama."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfz57",
"comment_text": [
"Again, all of this happened when Mandela was on prison. Blaming him for any of those acts is like blaming Ivan Grozny for the gulag camps; sure, it's his organization (or country), but he had absolutely nothing to do with it, for the sole reason that he physically couldn't have influence over Mk. ",
"Also, Mandela was found at his trial, to be guilty of ZERO counts of murder. Murder in this case, NOT meaning whether or not he went out and shot somebody. He was found, by the government he was fighting against, to be responsible for NO deaths, including through plans that he orchestrated "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:How/why can a man be several timed hit by thunder without dying?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8evq
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.4
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduxvcw",
"comment_text": [
"Yay I get to be the first one to say it; Now now lil' Danbery - people get hit by lightning not thunder (sorry bro)."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduyert",
"comment_text": [
"Most people 'hit by lightning' actually received an electric shock from a lightning strike nearby. But people do get struck by lightning and survive - sometimes the charge flows over the outside of their wet skin and through their soaked clothing without seriously affecting them beyond some localized burns from the high temperatures."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduzfg4",
"comment_text": [
"Lightning is the result of a large difference in electric charge between the Earth and the clouds. It's the same effect as when you occasionally get a static shock after getting out of a car etc. The difference is the scale, lightning is a much larger current (the rate at which charge moves) and voltage (the energy attached to each charge carrier).",
"Neither of these things are particularly good for you, although the high current is worse: a current of 100-200mA across the heart is fatal, lightning has up to 30 000 A (that is, more than a million times the fatal amount). The trick to surviving a lightning strike is that the heart is by far the most sensitive part of the body to electric shocks (as it uses electrical changes to control its speed). ",
"If you get struck by lightning in such a way that the current doesn't flow through your heart* (eg. your right arm in the air and your left leg off the ground makes the shortest path avoid the heart. Note: I do not recommend this as a safe way of going outside in thunder storms), then you may well survive. You wont enjoy the experience and you may be pretty badly burnt or have ",
"lichtenburg figure",
" marks on your skin, but you could survive. There's no reason that successive strikes over a course of months or years will have any immediately fatal effects, provided medical treatment is received each time.",
"Having said that, I understand that there is a strong association between lightning strikes and mental illnesses, particularly for repeated cases. This sometimes (often?) leads to suicide.",
"*Note: The other factor is that a lot of people get hit by the edge of the field, rather than directly. This also helps."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduzhg4",
"comment_text": [
"I really like that answer"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduxwsj",
"comment_text": [
"Because thunder does nothing at all to your body in a fatal sense."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Newton's 3rd law.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8msa
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
Why am I able to push this table if the table is exerting a force of same magnitude against me?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0786",
"comment_text": [
"The ground is holding you up. You feel the pressure on the bottom of your feet, don't you?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduzpjv",
"comment_text": [
"When you push on the table, it pushes back at you. However, your feet are on the ground, which is pushing you forward by friction. The table is also on the ground,but it's friction with the ground is lower, so the ground doesn't push on it as hard. therefore it slides"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv02u4",
"comment_text": [
"Force equals mass times acceleration, so mass does have something to do with it. It is possible for an object with a small mass to exert a large force if it's traveling fast enough, though. Like, getting hit with a baseball pitch would exert more force on you than having a basketball dropped on you from a height of 6 inches.",
"When you hit a nail with a hammer, the hammer and the nail both exert forces on each other. The force the hammer exerts on the nail drives it into the wood, and the force the nail exerts on the hammer slows it down.",
"The ground is pushing us up, with what's called normal force. When gravity pulls on an object, the surface it sits on must exert an upward force of equal magnitude, so that the sum of all forces equals 0 and the object does not move."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduzt3u",
"comment_text": [
"So it doesn't have anything to do with mass? ",
"Does the same thing happen with a hammer hitting a nail into wood? ",
"What about gravity. If it's pulling us to the ground, what's pushing us up? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0c6i",
"comment_text": [
"Okay so lets say I drop a ball from my hand. The only force acting on it is only gravity right? So the reaction force is the upward gravitational force exerted by the ball towards Earth. Can you explain about this reaction force? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How come when you angle your rear view mirror at the ceiling of the car you still see out the back window
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8qrd
| 14
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0u8j",
"comment_text": [
"The mirror has a wedge-shaped glass front (instead of flat, like most mirrors). When you angle the mirror toward the ceiling, you're putting it at the perfect angle for the reflection to now reflect off the glass front, which gives a clear (yet dimmer) reflection.",
" ",
"Here's an image showing what I mean",
"."
],
"score": 15
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv87g8",
"comment_text": [
"Also, that's a feature!",
"\nYou are supposed to flip the mirror to reduce the glare of headlights of cars behind you. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv4jwf",
"comment_text": [
"I've never actually looked this up but growing up I was always told there was a second mirror behind the first one which is slightly transparent. You can switch to the second mirror with the tab at the bottom of the rear view. The idea is that when another car is driving behind you at night and blinding you with their headlights you can pull the tab to adjust the mirrors and it will cut down on the amount of light shining into your eyes."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0u71",
"comment_text": [
"Mirror-ception... ",
"http://www.howstuffworks.com/question20.htm",
"Edit: Straight from the link: ",
"The mirror is not ground flat -- the front glass surface is at an angle to the back (mirrored) surface. So if you looked at this mirror out of its casing, it would be wedge-shaped with the thicker edge at the top. When you \"flip\" the mirror, the back mirrored surface actually points toward the dark ceiling, so you don't see that image. What you see instead is the image reflecting off the front of the glass, and this is much dimmer that the pure reflected image so it does not hurt your eyes."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv997a",
"comment_text": [
"yep, ",
"the little knob",
" under the mirror is to move it in a way that you have the same view"
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: Earlier today I heard someone say their air quality was "AQI-505", what does this mean?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8qtr
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.62
|
A brief explanation of the scale would nice too, thanks.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv15ix",
"comment_text": [
"Nope, he's just trolling. Your final question in your title was \"What does this mean?\", so he told you what \"this\" means."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2z81",
"comment_text": [
"I heard the air quality on the moon is AQI-404..."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0smz",
"comment_text": [
"The scale depends on the location, as it appears not to be standardized. See ",
"the Wikipedia page",
" for a list of different scales by major country."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0vk7",
"comment_text": [
"/r/firstworldanarchists"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv140c",
"comment_text": [
"I think you may have the wrong thread, friend. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why do we feel sleepy after eating a meal
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8q6q
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0mcn",
"comment_text": [
"imagine your body is a city block, if joe in apartment 1A starts plugging in all his appliances and turning them on, your lights might flicker. A similar thing is happening in your body, suddenly your stomach has all this food processing work to do, and it needs your body's resources to do it. You feel tired cause your stomach is working hard. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv51z0",
"comment_text": [
"I was told its cause blood is diverted to your stomach to help with digestion. But it was my sister who told me that not a teacher/doctor/surgeon/anyone with more than two brain cells so that info could be wrong. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv9c15",
"comment_text": [
"Your body is diverting energy to the digestive system (specifically the stomach and small intestine) so the body can properly digest the food you just ate. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv0ktq",
"comment_text": [
"We are made to sleep throughout the day naturally"
],
"score": -1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv3dx1",
"comment_text": [
"Cuz when you put yummies in your tummy the good things inside the food have to go alllll around your body! Doing this makes you get sweepy!"
],
"score": -1
}
|
||
ELI5: why should I care about Mandela?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8rq7
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.36
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv1489",
"comment_text": [
"being praised for the things any half-decent human would do",
"There aren't nearly as many of these as you think. Furthermore, its not as likely for a person to stand up and fight for the rights of their fellow man as you might think - for instance the ",
"bystander effect",
". ",
"Whenever it comes to a major issue like that of apartheid in South Africa, the number of people who feel that they ",
" stand up is usually small. The number of people who ",
" stand up is even smaller. This is true for almost every rebellion against a larger entity - most people feel its not a good idea, are scared, or what have you. Once you build up momentum, sure people are up in arms - but someone has to stand up ",
". Mandela was among the first",
"So the reason we care is because he ",
" stand up, in a position of leadership where he influenced strongly the South African movement to end apartheid, and that's not as common of a trait as one might think. Plus he did so in a way where nonviolence was a core tenant, which is also not as common in a social revolution. And so we celebrate that trait because by spotlighting and lifting up the people who do stand up, we can hope to inspire others to also stand up to oppression and fight for freedom."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv1l1z",
"comment_text": [
"Well, talking about things any hald-decent human would do I did not have in mind fight against apartheid or something like that. Simple things, really, like helping a friend in the prison when friend was sick.",
"I do get why what he did is huge for South Africa, but I really really fail to see importance of the to the world—aside the inspiration angle.",
"Now if someone could end Palestine-Israel conflict, that would be something."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv1r5i",
"comment_text": [
"Maybe a practical example: ",
"His arrest and recognition of why he was arrested led to widespread protest in the US",
" that eventually led to congressional action, sanctions, and more.",
"Especially post civil-rights, his ability to go from a poor background to a lawyer, to the leader of a civil rights movement, and eventually with much struggle to be President of the nation that once oppressed him, would have resonated significantly with the African American community ",
", nevermind post MLK."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv27bl",
"comment_text": [
"This very topic is currently being discussed in another post that is currently on the front page of ",
"/r/ELI5",
". For this reason, we have removed this post. Feel free to continue the discussion in the other thread!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv5ocf",
"comment_text": [
"Really? A discussion about ",
" does not warrant a question about Nelson Mandela?",
"Sorry you don't understand the rule."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why was this painting sold for more than 72mln dollars?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8vdi
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2v6u",
"comment_text": [
"Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (the purchaser) is sitting on over $2.5 billion in assets. To protect that money, which can only be insured to a certain extent, folks like him just purchase items that hold value. \nWhen someone has that much money, they're not really worried about making money like most people, they're just trying to keep as much of it safe from things like inflation, which diminishes the value of fiat currencies but not things that are a store of value like precious metals and artwork. ",
"Not to mention 72 million is peanuts to people like him...",
"source: I'm a money guy, not an art guy. "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv21pt",
"comment_text": [
"Because someone wanted it that badly."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv36hz",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not surprised to see people making snide remarks about Rothko's art, but quite frankly, Rothko is one of the most influential and well-known abstract artists in history. A thumbnail image isn't the way to take in his art (same with Pollock). Many people who have viewed his art on their large canvases have reported feeling deep emotional connections with the painting and the feeling of getting lost in the moment.",
"It sold for $72mil because of that, as well as because someone with a ton of money wanted it that bad.",
"I personally like the story about him being commissioned to do an entire series of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant, eating there, and then deciding that the restaurant was too pretentious for his artwork. He said, and I quote, \"I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who eats there.\""
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2do7",
"comment_text": [
"To be fair, Mark Rothko is as famous as Jackson Pollock. It's not surprising his art sells high."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv30dp",
"comment_text": [
"There are two main reasons that modern art sells for high prices, and generally, they combine to create these high prices.",
"The first is that the piece \"took art forwards\". In other words, there is a thought, idea, or abstraction behind the art that is represented in the art. I am not anywhere close to an expert on Rothko, but a quick read of his wikipedia shows that there was a level of meaning behind what he was doing.",
"As abstract or expressionist art goes, it's often important to read the artists statements and reasoning behind the piece and consider it while looking at the art.",
"The paragraph above this one is why many people are incredulous about modern art.",
"The second reason paintings like this sell for lots of money is because they have shown to be good investments. In general, the costs of these pieces have been fairly recession proof, and have shown growth despite economies. Thus it is a place to put money, to appear to be discerning about art, and to possibly make more money while doing both of those things."
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: Carbon dating
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s90tb
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
How do scientists go about determining when an object was formed by "reading" the carbon.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv4gin",
"comment_text": [
"There is an isotope of Carbon that has 2 extra neutrons, called Carbon-14. It is unstable, and decays at a very precise rate. Its half life is about 5730 years, which means that in that amount of time, half of it decays. In another 5730 years, half of what was remaining decays, and so on.",
"Since all biological compounds have carbon, and since we know what proportion of that is Carbon-14, we can examine an old artifact to determine how much Carbon-14 is left. From this, we can get a good approximation of the age of the artifact."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv4r72",
"comment_text": [
"It starts with the 80% nitrogen in the atmosphere. When high speed particles from space, (cosmic rays), hit our atmosphere, they very often cause neutrons to bounce about or are neutrons themselves. When one of these neutrons hit a nitrogen atom, they knock a proton out and the neutron sticks, the result is an isotope of carbon called carbon-14. Carbon-14 has two extra neutrons in it's nucleus, and they are unstable. Eventually they pop out at random and you get the most stable form of carbon, carbon-12, but it takes on average 5,730 years to happen.",
"Since cosmic rays are continuously hitting our atmosphere, there is a ratio of carbon-12:carbon-14 that exists in the whole of the biosphere. When a plant or animal grows, it consumes carbon from the biosphere, thus the carbon in it's body has the same ratio as can be found in the atmosphere. Once the organism dies, it stops absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, so the amount of carbon-14 is fixed. This fixed carbon-14 will decay at an average rate of 5,730 years, also called the half-life. Thus by comparing the ratio of carbon 12:14 in dead organic matter, we can tell how long ago it died.",
"Since the carbon 14 content is being halved continuously, it eventually gets so small that we can't accurately measure it. So there's an upper limit to how far back we can look with carbon dating. It looks to be about 50,000 - 100,000 years depending on technique used. Carbon dating can also be used on non organic matter, although I'm not sure about the details. But presumably it's from material that formed from carbon in our atmosphere. Other elements have different half-lifes which allows us to date much farther back, the general idea is much the same."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv5la9",
"comment_text": [
"Wow! That's really interesting, thanks for sharing. I figure it may be extremely complicated, but how exactly does one go about \"measuring\" the carbon in an object? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv6kn2",
"comment_text": [
"They have whats called mass spectrometers. Basically they take a tiny bit of material, grind it up into a fine powder. They then heat this powder, this causes little bits of the material to fly off, (vaporizing).",
"Then they ionize the material so that an electron get stripped off. So now you have a bunch of atoms, most of them just missing one electron so each has an electric charge of one. They then accelerate these using charges plates through a magnetic field, then they hit a sensor. Where they hit the sensorr tells you their mass, as how much the magnetic field managed to displace each atom depends on how heavy it was. Then you get a resulting ",
"graph",
" with spikes in it that represent certain masses. They can then determine exactly what something is made of and in what proportions. Based on how heavy each atom was. A carbon-14 atom will be a bit heavier than a carbon-12 atom.",
"As for isotopes, since say a carbon-14 atom will be very close in mass to a nitrogen-14, they filter the materials first using a variety of different means so that they're only measuring the carbon. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv89jy",
"comment_text": [
"ELI5 - If Carbon-14 completely decays after 11,460 years, how can they tell something is 100,000 years old?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why do fast food restaurants only bring back some of their best burgers for a 'limited time'?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8tzi
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
I read that McDonald's brings back the McRib when pork prices are their lowest but I don't want to count it as it's not really a good burger. More like Wendy's mushroom melt types.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv1o8m",
"comment_text": [
"Perceived scarcity causes people to pay a higher price. By implying that something is around for \"a limited time\", even if they can reasonably make it all the time, they can charge a higher price and people will still go buy it."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv26hm",
"comment_text": [
"This. Disney does the same thing when they periodically put movies in the \"Disney Vault\" and then re-release them. They make more money that way."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2ck3",
"comment_text": [
"Eh, if they can't have you for that reason most of the year they don't worry about it.",
"The important thing is that they can reliably steal you from other companies with a pretty simple (from their perspective) change. I'm sure they calculate the number of people they could have if they had your mushroom melts all year but that cash flow is less than what they make by extorting you a few times a year."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvgyn9",
"comment_text": [
"On a related note, making an entirely new variation \"limited time only\" allows it to be withdrawn quietly if it doesn't sell. \nThat became standard practice throughout the processed-food industry in the '90s after the conspicuous failures of the New Coke, McDonalds' McDLT and Crystal Pepsi."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv29xh",
"comment_text": [
"Seems simple enough.",
"Must work $ wise or they wouldn't do it.",
"But let's say I don't care for anything at Wendy's but the mushroom melt. So I go a few times a year when they have it and they make an extra $1 off of me...but if I am a industry termed 'heavy user' they would miss out on my visiting their establishment a dozen times over the year because I can't have what I want."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
what makes poop smell?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s8zcm
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.38
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv3o5w",
"comment_text": [
"Think of it this way: if we DIDN'T find the smell of poop unappealing, and instead it smelled GOOD, then we may start eating poop.",
"This is a very bad idea and can make us very sick (eating other people's poop).",
"I don't think there's anything inherently \"bad\" about poop (it is, for example, the staple of many insects' diets). But for us, it must necessarily smell bad so we don't eat it.",
"Same with rotting meat, and basically most things in nature that we shouldn't eat.",
"There are exceptions of course but I think that's a pretty good way of looking at it."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv3p63",
"comment_text": [
"ipod shuffle"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv3s25",
"comment_text": [
"I'm pretty sure poop smells bad all the time. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv40zj",
"comment_text": [
"Something smelling good or bad is an opinion. Hard to say it's an absolute when it's an opinion."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv7cct",
"comment_text": [
"If poop EVER smelled good, there would be poop-scented candles, poop-porri (see what I did there?), etc.",
"However, there is not.",
"Poop sometimes smells \"tolerable\" but you never smell poop and say \"I really want to eat that and/or rub it all over my body.\" Not normally, anyway."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why flights are generally much cheaper if you book far in advance
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9ai0
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.77
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv70j8",
"comment_text": [
"The closer you get to the date, the fewer seats that are left - low supply, high demand, higher prices. ",
"The airline knows what the base cost of a seat needs to be in order for the flight to be profitable. They know how full those flights tend to be, and how much demand there is for anyone one flight. So they price accordingly - buying earlier usually means you can grab those seats that are the lowest in price. ",
"This isn't always true - sometimes there might be cheap seats on flights that the airline is trying to fill at the last minute in order to keep the flight profitable. You have to buy carefully - but in general buying early can provide good savings."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv6x8l",
"comment_text": [
"people are willing to pay more if they are desperate."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv70q0",
"comment_text": [
"Fares are sold on a tiered basis.",
"Say there are 100 seats on an airplane. The airline could sell 40 seats at $200, 40 seats at $400, and 20 seats at $600. If you are one of the first 40 to book you get a much better price than if you wait until the last minute.",
"Why do they do this? Market segmentation. This allows them to charge the most out of the people who usually have deeper pockets (business travelers booking at the last minute) and still sell plenty of seats to budget travelers."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvan35",
"comment_text": [
"The airline makes it's real money on business travelers (whom tend to book less than 2-4 weeks in advance). It's easy to charge them more because they can't negotiate dates and they don't care because the company pays for it.",
"It gives deals for tourists off peak to help ensure it has enough bodies on the plane to at least make sure they're not stuck with a plane operates at a loss for being too empty "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdveb70",
"comment_text": [
"Also, the airline is rewarding you for paying early. It is better for them to get the money early as they can (It is worth more to them), and also to know they have bookings (so they can guarantee a route/add more planes or staff, etc...)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Is there a way to prevent the next recession?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9jji
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
It seems like recessions happen every 8-10 years. Is there a way to prevent them from happening in the future?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv9s2o",
"comment_text": [
"Probably not, they are caused by people.",
"So... if we got rid of all the people.... hmmmm... "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvbqp0",
"comment_text": [
"The short answer is \"no\".",
"Banks and regulators are in a permanent state of dynamic tension. Regulators seek to make the market stable and predictable, by outlawing behaviours which threaten the market. Banks and other investing institutions seek to make the most of the regulatory environment by finding ways to make money within the rules that the other banks hadn't thought of.",
"You can learn to predict recessions and minimise your own exposure to them by recognising the five stages of a stock market bubble \"boom\", which often herald the start of a recession \"bust\".",
"These five stages are taken from Kindleberger (1989, 'Manias, Panics and Crashes')."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvk2na",
"comment_text": [
"As you are familiar with them, yes.",
"Inappropriate credit creation distorts price signals in the market which results in wrongly allocated investment. Bad investment is eventually revealed to be bad investment when interest rates rise or credit flow slows.",
"Boom and bust isn't really a \"cycle\" as much as it is a consequence resulting from repeated credit creation abuse. It takes a central bank to create those national and international recessions you may be thinking about. ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv9w0b",
"comment_text": [
"Sure, get rid of the boom and bust that capitalism is, and replace it with an economy that does nothing but serve the needs of the people."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv9x8n",
"comment_text": [
"Hail Marx and Lenin?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How come controllers, remotes etc need two batteries and can't work with just one?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9moy
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvawup",
"comment_text": [
"That's not how voltage works. If it was to make it last longer they'd be wired in parallel, not in series.",
"The ",
" reason is that the chips and transmitters need more than 1.5V to function."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvbbz2",
"comment_text": [
"Also ..current........"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfbza",
"comment_text": [
"Look at the right hand side of the page, you'll find ",
"\"LI5 means ",
", simplified and layman-accessible explanations, not for responses aimed at literal five year olds (which can be patronizing)\"",
"Don't be a dick about this, if you don't want people to ask questions don't come on this subreddit, and definitely don't insult them for asking the question.",
"EDIT: Realised I fed the troll T_T"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfbza",
"comment_text": [
"Look at the right hand side of the page, you'll find ",
"\"LI5 means ",
", simplified and layman-accessible explanations, not for responses aimed at literal five year olds (which can be patronizing)\"",
"Don't be a dick about this, if you don't want people to ask questions don't come on this subreddit, and definitely don't insult them for asking the question.",
"EDIT: Realised I fed the troll T_T"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvd2zh",
"comment_text": [
"My remotes only take one."
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
ELI5: How are we running out of freshwater? Why don't we just take the salt out of the saltwater?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9qmc
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.8
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvbxwc",
"comment_text": [
"That can be done. It's called desalinization - and it's very energy intensive."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvc4hg",
"comment_text": [
"Running out of freshwater means that naturally occurring sources of freshwater (lakes, glaciers/snowpacks, underground springs or reservoirs) are running out. It is different from \"running out of water\", which seems to be what you are asking about."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvc74p",
"comment_text": [
"What will we do when the lakes, glaciers, snowpacks, underground springs and reservoirs run out?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvcd1s",
"comment_text": [
"We'll probably have to:\n-Heavily reuse our sewage water by cleaning it to a point when it is usable again. This will probably be for agriculture and farming uses.\n-Build large-scale desalination plants to get fresh water from salt water\n-Import fresh water from other countries."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvcnib",
"comment_text": [
"That sounds very expensive.. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why hasn't lava stopped being hot? How is it still doing its thing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9pw3
| 14
| true
| false
| 0.72
|
I don't really understand what the source of energy is that's making lava continue to burn up. Is the earth just acting like an insulation system? And if so, will all the lava someday be used up? Or is it constantly being made somehow?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvctj9",
"comment_text": [
"Also, OP, you're referring to 'magma', which is 'underground lava'. Once the magma breaks the surface, it is then 'lava'."
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvctj9",
"comment_text": [
"Also, OP, you're referring to 'magma', which is 'underground lava'. Once the magma breaks the surface, it is then 'lava'."
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdve8u5",
"comment_text": [
"1) Friction. Because the magma layer is liquid it experiences tidal forces which contribute to the heat.\n2) Radioactivity. Radioactive materials in the earth's mantle contribute to keeping the magma layer liquid.\n3) Insulation. The surface of the earth is solid, thick, and a very poor conductor of heat.",
"Will it be used up? Yes. Eventually the earth will cool down enough for the magma to freeze and the continents will no longer float on the surface."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvjlgg",
"comment_text": [
"The earth wouldn't cool down immediately.",
"What would happen, however, is that the geomagnetic field would shut down, as it depends upon the convection of iron-rich magma.",
"Once this has happened, life would die out from increased cosmic radiation. The Earth's atmosphere would also be stripped away by solar wind.",
"Eventually, the Earth would end up looking much like Mars."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvgzoy",
"comment_text": [
"On a sidenote, what happens when the magma does freeze? Would the earth cool down drastically and become uninhabitable?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: How are files locked, and why we can't un-lock them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9xdf
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
Files are just 1s and 0s, so the unlocked file is in the locked file somewhere. I'm also guessing that there's some binary stating that the file is locked. Why can't we just make a program that reads the binary, skips the locked part, and outputs the file?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdve72a",
"comment_text": [
"Files can be made password-protected. I'm talking about password protected files, not files that can't be opened because they're already opened in another program.",
"Edit: Thanks for the responses. I hadn't thought of that."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvedo8",
"comment_text": [
"Some programs use encryption to lock files, these typically jumble up all of the content with a type of unique cipher. The password that is chosen to lock it will be the only key to un-jumble a properly protected file."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdveega",
"comment_text": [
"Oh, I see. Well, they are encrypted in such a way that the password is required to decrypt them.",
"Imagine I encrypt a text file by moving each character along by one letter, so a becomes b, b becomes c, c becomes d, etc.",
"Now imagine that, instead of just moving along one letter, I move along X letters. How do I know what X is? Well, I perform some mathematical operation on your password.",
"So if you enter the wrong password, I get the wrong X. And without the right X, I can't decrypt your file.",
"It's clearly done in a much more mathematically complex way than this, but this is the basic idea."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvegtw",
"comment_text": [
"Depends.",
"A good password protected file will also be encrypted so you need the key to decrypt it.",
"Now, programs to bypass password protected files exists for file formats that are not encripted and can bypass the lock mark or use such a bad encryption scheme that it might as well not have used one (hello word and excel files, at least older versions of them.. )"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdve3vf",
"comment_text": [
"A locked file usually means that another program is in the process of changing it.",
"Let's imagine you're reading a file at the same time as I'm writing it. I write the first half of the file, but before I get around to writing the second half, you read the file. Now, what you've read is the first half of the new version of the file, plus the second half of the old version of the file. For most file types, this would result in you reading nonsense, which is why operating systems provide a system for preventing it from happening."
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
Similar to "times table" why is there no other "math" table? Or is it there?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9wrc
| 5
| true
| false
| 1
|
As kids, we were asked to learn "times table", but we never learnt any other tables. Do you know of any other tables that could be useful? Why are there no other "tables"?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdve2dl",
"comment_text": [
"No, because addition and subtraction are basically counting, and if you know the multiplication table, then you also know how to divide those numbers."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvduou",
"comment_text": [
"http://www.math.com/tables/general/addtable.htm",
"http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/worksheets/mini_offices/math%20charts.pdf",
"http://www.eduplace.com/parents/resources/homework/pdf/div_table.pdf"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvdywh",
"comment_text": [
"But were you asked to learn anyother table other than multiplication?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvetbb",
"comment_text": [
"First of all, many elementary students do explicitly practice memorizing single-digit addition and subtraction facts with flash cards, although you are right that this generally isn't done as explicitly or as systematically as the multiplication table.",
"In terms of why only multiplication? As another user noted, addition and subtraction can be pretty much figured out by counting even if you forget the single-digit addition facts, although many people do small addition problems by rote rather than by counting (e.g., a lot of people will instantly recognize that 9+7=16 without actually counting).",
"The multiplication table is especially useful since knowing it ",
"automatically",
" allows you to multiply two numbers of any size, helps you do long division much faster and also helps with factoring algorithms in Algebra, e.g. factoring x",
" + x - 72 is actually really easy if you know how to factor and you instantly recognize that 8*9=72.",
"Other number tables aren't explicitly memorized, but can be useful. I'm a math nerd and I've memorized things like the primes up to 100, the perfect squares up to 20",
" the powers of 2 up to 2",
" or so and the factorials up to 8!. All of these things can help speed up mental calculations but none of them are quite as essential as memorizing the multiplication table up to 10.",
"On a related note, ",
"automaticity",
" has significant value in math because once you get to things like algebra and beyond you want to be able to basic arithmetic computations quickly and even sort of intuitively so that you can focus on the actual new concepts and equation solving techniques."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdveuzc",
"comment_text": [
"There are other tables, like roots, sine and cosine tables. ",
"You don't learn those because you don't really use them often enough and they're too complicated to be practical to memorize them, so you just use written tables or a slide rule to get them (well.. not anymore since now we have calculators, but once upon a time that's the way it was usually done). ",
"You can also obtain this values using simpler math but it's usually not done like this except a couple of times just to understand how they work, because it's just too time consuming to be practical."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: If I inhale a small insect, or swallow a drink the wrong way, and it goes in my lungs, does it stay there?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s9y8e
| 37
| true
| false
| 0.81
|
I was recently jogging through a some woods and definitely inhaled a small flying insect. It never got coughed up.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvhi3u",
"comment_text": [
"There's a possibility that it didn't make it all the way into your lungs, or stay in your lungs, due to little hairs call cilia and the mucus they are coated in. It'll push the little guy out so you can either properly digest it, or cough it up. ",
"There are some circumstances when something actually makes its way in to your lungs, in which case there's a small chance that the bacteria on the item can cause pneumonia. ",
"If you get flu/cold symptoms or have trouble breathing, then see a doc ASAP. Otherwise, don't worry about it. More often than not the coughing process dislodges it from the lungs (just maybe not to the point of being able to spit it out). "
],
"score": 26
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvki80",
"comment_text": [
"I've had pneumonia 4 or 5 times, it feels like you're short of breath and then you start feeling like someone is stabbing you in the chest every time you try to take anything more than a shallow breath. This is when you go to the doctor/hospital. Otherwise you're probably going to die. It's even worse when you lay down so expect to sleep sitting up. They'll prescribe you antibiotics (or admit you if it's bad enough) but once you're on antibiotics the pain goes away pretty quickly but you'll probably feel winded quite a bit. I always knew it was coming on when my blood pressure would start spiking for no reason. (Edit: I think I meant to say heart rate)",
"The first time I had it I was 6. My mom noticed that I'd had a cold that mostly went away and then came back with a really nasty cough. One night she woke up and decided to check on me. I was already awake getting stabbed in the chest by my own lungs. I wasn't going to tell her because I didn't want to worry her but I did and off to the hospital we went. I was there for a few days but that was the only time I was hospitalized for it.",
"Moral of the story, don't smoke in the house with your kids hanging around. You'll fuck them up."
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvhi3k",
"comment_text": [
"I don't think it would be absorbed quite like if it was swallowed and went to the stomach (obviously getting digested).. I'd imagine it'd start to decompose and create all kinds of bacteria in your lungs."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvohoe",
"comment_text": [
"The inside of your trachea and bronchi (the airways) are extremely sensitive. However, your nostrils and your airways are also lined by ciliated cells (hair cells) that act as a physical mechanism to keep out foreign objects (ie dust, particles, and in your case, small insects). It is unlikely to inhale something big enough to see, have it land in your airways, and not produce a violent coughing reaction. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvh3tw",
"comment_text": [
"I feel like this is wrong even though I am not an expert myself. The fly should, if there is no bodily function to stop it or get rid of the fly in a different way, decay and be absorbed by the lungs."
],
"score": 3
}
|
|
ELI5: Who do most of our "traditional" Christmas songs, images and TV/movies come from the 1940s to the 1960s?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sa25q
| 26
| true
| false
| 0.79
|
Think about it: Bing Crosby Nat King Cole Andy Williams Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (TV and song) Frosty the Snowman (TV and song) White Christmas (song and movie) Norman Rockwell All of these enduring images, songs and other forms of media seem to come from that time period. I dont see tons of enduring carols, etc from the 70s, or 80s. What made that time period endure?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfmxa",
"comment_text": [
"Here's my opinion on this, I have no expertise in it though. By the way, this idea is directly plagiarized from ",
"xkcd",
".",
"Baby Boomers",
" grew up with those things and there are currently a lot of Baby Boomers. Also , if you look at the current age and buying power of Baby Boomer's, they are really the perfect target demographic if you're trying to decide what music to play during Christmas shopping time at Macy's to get people in a nostalgic, warm-and-fuzzy, Christmas shopping mood."
],
"score": 29
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfod8",
"comment_text": [
"In the words of xkcd's Randall Munroe: ",
"Every year, American culture embarks on a massive project to recreate the Christmases of baby boomers' childhoods",
". This generation is uncommonly large and has for a long time been in a position to influence the culture."
],
"score": 16
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvj6b3",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not at all disagreeing that the Baby Boomers were and are one of the most influential generations when it comes to general culture. However, I remain unconvinced that it's that simple.",
"The 40s and 50s was pretty much when popular music started being really marketed and distributed on a large scale for the first time. Isn't it possible that the 40s is when christmas songs first started being put on records? And they would become traditional because the first generation to listen to these--regardless of the size of the generation--would play these songs around their kids, who would in turn get nostalgic, etc, etc. "
],
"score": 14
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvoet6",
"comment_text": [
"Back then they made just as much shit music as they do now. We just don't remember anything other than the hits because they're not worth remembering."
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvfu4v",
"comment_text": [
"At this time you see the rise of commercial advertising aiming to create an image of christmas that was easily sellable and marketable. This became more common as advertising and consumer culture boomed after WWII, and the images, songs, etc that were designed to make money stuck around to become what we think of as \"tradition.\""
],
"score": 9
}
|
|
ELI5: How did the USA and USSR go from being Allies in WWII, to being enemies in the Cold War?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4mah
| 7
| true
| false
| 0.69
|
I did history at GCSE and ALevel, but never covered these topics. It just seems like some big old "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" until one enemy dies, and the enemy that gave you a helping hand is suddenly the only one standing against you, and world domination. [EDIT] Some Subquestions:
To what extent did McCarthyism plat into the whole USSR == bad?
How and why was the USA swayed by McCarthyism? What was the USSR equivalent of McCarthyism? PS, Were any of McCarthyism's victims USSRian?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtutv3",
"comment_text": [
"In school you sit next to Tommy. You don't like Tommy. You hate Tommy. You and he don't agree on anything. You just try to avoid contact with Tommy. ",
"Suddenly, Billy busts into the classroom with a squirt gun full of his own pee and runs screaming that he's going to cover you and Tommy with pee. ",
"Will you unite with Tommy to take down Billy? Yes - the immediate threat is Billy & his squirt gun full of pee. Will you love Tommy after taking down Billy? Maybe like him a little more, but everything else is the same. So probably still, screw Tommy. "
],
"score": 17
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtunox",
"comment_text": [
"The USA and the USSR were never really \"friends\", even during the war. It was pretty much universally accepted that the USSR and the US/Western Europe were very much at odds with each other, before and even during the War. The political, economic and even cultural ideologies differed too greatly for them to get along. However, both sides hated Nazi Germany and feared its advance enough to unite against it.",
"Once that was over, not only wasn't there a common enemy to bring them together, but the US and USSR emerged as the two dominant Super Powers of the Post-WW2 World. All those differences came to a head, and now it was division between the two countries that were, indisputably, the most powerful in the world. The tension eventually grew into full blown opposition to each other."
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx7bh",
"comment_text": [
"Very solid example the only thing I can add is that ",
" you had an awesome new exploding toy that it threw at that backstabbing bastard ",
" Steve who allied with Billy ",
". After seeing the sweet new toy, ",
" Tommy wanted to have an exploding toy too. The struggle to have to coolest and biggest toys begins so that ",
" Tommy won't be able to throw his toys at the ",
" you, nor you ",
" at ",
" Tommy. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtuqzu",
"comment_text": [
"The US never really liked the communist russians, one of the factors behind nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to show off to Stalin and co that they had the bomb and were prepared to use it"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtv2ae",
"comment_text": [
"Two biggest kids on the playground. (explained as if you were five)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why is it that certain toys are hard to find? Why don't they just make enough?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4viu
| 3
| true
| false
| 1
|
ELI5: Why is it that certain toys are hard to find? Why don't they just make enough? An example being: When Star Wars episode 1 came out, the Darth Maul figure was impossible to find. Or currently there are certain SkyLanders you can't find. Thanks!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxoux",
"comment_text": [
"They don't always anticipate the demand and are afraid of making too many. Nobody wants to be stuck with merchandise they can't move. This is why they'd rather err on the side of caution and not make enough (you can always make more) than to make too many and lose money that way. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu0lu3",
"comment_text": [
"Also, they often make them by the boatload in China, then have to wait two or three months for the boat to make it across the ocean.",
"So even if they get on the phone to the factory on the same day that sales go crazy, it's going to be 2-3 months before they can get any more."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxmqq",
"comment_text": [
"Popularity, low number of the product shipped, limited edition,"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxnsj",
"comment_text": [
"Supply and demand. There has to be a \"demand\" for a product, otherwise the manufacturers wouldn't be able to set their prices where they want. The less toys made, the more someone might be willing to pay for it because it took them months to find one. Also it's hard for a toy manufacturer to initially predict how well a toy will sell."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu0l17",
"comment_text": [
"A manufacturer may underestimate demand and not build up enough supply. ",
"Or the lack of supply may be intentional by the manufacturer is an attempt to stir up demand. When consumers worry they may not be able to get something, they're more likely to buy it sooner. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Carbon Dating, and accuracy of it.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4v99
| 4
| true
| false
| 1
|
I sort of understand Carbon Dating, but it'd be nice to have a good explanation from here. Also, are there any problems with it? Is it reliable?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdty7hl",
"comment_text": [
"Carbon-14 is an unstable isotope of carbon. Usually, a carbon atom is made up of 6 protons and 6 neutrons, making carbon-12. However, high in the atmosphere, nitrogen (7 protons, 7 neutrons) is constantly being bombarded with radiation from the sun, which means that occasionally one of its protons is changed into a neutron, making carbon-14 (6 protons, 8 neutrons). Either way, carbon typically bonds with two oxygens, making CO2 which is breathable by plants and animals alike.",
"When an organism is alive, it's always taking small amounts of carbon-14 into its body from the atmosphere. However, when the organism dies and is no longer breathing in the atmosphere, it stops taking in carbon atoms. The carbon-14 decays back into nitrogen at a measurable, constant rate, with a half life of about 5,730 years, plus or minus 40 years. By measuring the amount of carbon-14 left, it's possible to figure out when the organism died. Sunspots and other factors can make the amount of carbon-14 in the air inconsistent over long periods of time, so numbers are usually cross-checked against the amount of carbon-14 left in ancient trees, whose age can be measured through dendrochronology (IE matching ring patterns).",
"There are a few problems with carbon-14 dating. It can't date inorganic matter, and only works to about 50,000-60,000 years back. It's terrible at dating marine life in general, since marine life involves a lot of carbon that's never seen the kiss of sunlight. Also, if a sample has contaminants such as dust or mold on it, sometimes the carbon-14 in the contaminants is measured along with the sample, giving an inaccurate result. If the specimen was buried in the ground near uranium deposits, this can make it look much younger than it is because uranium reacts with nitrogen in much the same way that the sun's rays do, making more carbon-14 than would usually be found. However, it's still a tested and accurate technology, despite these limitations, and is used widely in archaeology.",
"An interesting side note -- Since around the 1940s, humans have flooded the earth with a massive amount of carbon-14 due to all the nuclear bombs we've been setting off. This means that it's very easy to use carbon-14 dating to see if certain organic things such as wine are older or younger than 1940."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdud280",
"comment_text": [
"Carbon Dating isn't used to date the earth or super-old objects. It's used to date archaeological items such as cloth (which is typically made from plant or animal material), or bones that weren't fossilized. Carbon dating can't be used on true fossils since all the carbon's been replaced by minerals.",
"However, there's also:",
"Dendrochronology",
"Thermoluminescence dating",
"Archaeomagnetic dating",
"Out of Africa Origin of Man Theory",
"Obsidian Hydration dating",
"Potassium-Argon dating",
"Fission-Track Thermochronology dating",
"Electron spin resonance dating",
"Amino Acid Racemization",
"Uranium-Lead dating",
"Argon-argon dating",
"Helioseismic Dating",
"Paleomagnetic dating",
"Missing Isotopes",
"Meteorite and Moon Rock dating",
"As you can see, Carbon-14 dating is by no means the only age measurement in the pot."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxzsd",
"comment_text": [
"When an organism dies, it stops taking in Carbon. Specifically, Carbon-14, which is radioactive. So as the organism's remains lie there (the portions that don't decay, at least) the amount of Carbon-14 it started with decays radioactively. We know what proportion of Carbon is isotope 14, so we can calculate how much of that original starting amount of Carbon-14 is gone. How much is gone vs. how much remains can be used to calculate how old the remains are."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdue3ko",
"comment_text": [
"Wow! Amazingly helpful reply! Thank you sir, you deserve gold. If only I could buy it for you :( "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduaw24",
"comment_text": [
"So that being said, how is it still used as a dating tool with such certainty? I hear all of the time how scientists are dating objects to be super old and sound so matter of a fact about it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What does it mean for something to be self-aware?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4xnf
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
It comes up when talking about super computers and the difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Thanks!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzbnv",
"comment_text": [
"Perhaps eventually but who knows when or how. At this point nobody even knows what consciousness is. Ask two scientists or philosophers what a mind is and you'll get two completely different answers. How a piece of material (like us) can have weird immaterial properties like thoughts or feelings is still a complete mystery. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzbnv",
"comment_text": [
"Perhaps eventually but who knows when or how. At this point nobody even knows what consciousness is. Ask two scientists or philosophers what a mind is and you'll get two completely different answers. How a piece of material (like us) can have weird immaterial properties like thoughts or feelings is still a complete mystery. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxwwx",
"comment_text": [
"Knows that it is a separate entity from those around it. Able to put itself in the shoes of others. Can look in a mirror and realise that what is looking back is itself. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdty3rs",
"comment_text": [
"We humans have something called metacognition, which means we are aware of the fact that we are aware. This type of inner reflection is what separates humans from other animals (nobody knows for sure if some animals can do this) and, of course, computers which don't have any kind of self awareness as of yet."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtybqi",
"comment_text": [
"There's a test for this\nthey put a dot or a mark if some sort on the animals face place it in a mirror and if they notice it it proves they know what they see in the mirror is them \"self awareness\". Most adult great apes have some level of consciousness "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why we do not have a world government and a world currency?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4ui4
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
I'm not talking about the UN I am talking more about like the EU but for the world type thing.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx2me",
"comment_text": [
"Because nobody has managed to conquer the entire world yet, and people aren't going to team up willingly."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxd45",
"comment_text": [
"There is no world currency because of monetary and fiscal policy as the tool to help the economy recover from a recession"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxhc1",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah, I've often wondered this too considering how well everyone gets on with each other."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu1vsv",
"comment_text": [
"UN is more like NGO only, so nothing there.\nEU isn't really government- governance should have common constitution which I think it doesn't. It's more of regional co-operation like SAARC, BIMSTEC or any others.",
"World government is impossible, since there is huge disparity in terms of development and even modernity (like education or health). Creating a common world currency in present climate would cause massive inequalities between people.",
"It's just not viable."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu26fk",
"comment_text": [
"Because no country would be willing to give up it's sovereignty to further the endeavors of another nation, or many nations."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What are bitcoins and how are people suddenly becoming millionaires because of them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s4uks
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.77
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx81b",
"comment_text": [
"If only anyone else knew how to spell daily."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx64f",
"comment_text": [
"It's a virtual currency that is mined through \"mining\" mathematical equations created by someone at MIT.",
"The reason the people became millionaires is because when the price went up due to the increased demand relative to the supply, the price multiplied by quantity of bit coins resulted in them becoming millionaires"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx3t5",
"comment_text": [
"An Internet currency. People are getting so rich because they mined or invested in them when there value was much much much lower."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtxi02",
"comment_text": [
"This question concerns one of the most frequently asked topics on ELI5, so it has been removed. Try the searchbar!",
"It's okay to re-post questions, but please indicate that you did a search and that previous questions/answers didn't help you understand."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtx54v",
"comment_text": [
"If only anyone else posted this dailey"
],
"score": -1
}
|
||
ELI5: How dowsing (aka walking around with a stick straight out horizontally until it points down of its own accord) actually locates water under the ground
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s52x8
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
It seems like it should be old timey ritualistic nonsense, but my understanding is that this actually works!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzhcc",
"comment_text": [
"It doesn't work. All cultures have superstitions (though some more than others). This is a superstition from your culture. "
],
"score": 14
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzest",
"comment_text": [
"By not working. Scientific studies have shown that it's no better than chance. People just remember the times it \"worked\". ",
"They walk around, dig somewhere and nothing, walk around, dig somewhere else and nothing, walk around and dig and water. OMG! It worked!"
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzjz3",
"comment_text": [
"It works because in many places if you dig deep enough you have a good chance of hitting water.",
"It also just occurs to me that maybe some dowsers know about visible indications of underground water (like trees or foliage or something) assuming that there are such things (not being a dowser, I don't know if there are). "
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzrd2",
"comment_text": [
"You don't just have a good chance. Dig deep enough, you WILL find water. You just have to have faith, and keep digging, and understand that actually there is water everywhere underground."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtzxqy",
"comment_text": [
"It sounds a lot like psychics doing cold readings.",
": \"I'm sensing something about a Jeremy or Jane. Does that name mean anything to anyone?\"",
"\n<crickets chirping>",
"\n",
": \"How about John or Jim or Jack?\"",
"\n",
": \"I had an uncle John!\"",
"\n",
": \"And did he die of some sort of heart or blood problem?\"",
"\n",
": \"Yes! He had a stroke and died. That's amazing. And you saw that he passed away a decade ago, too! Truly inspiring.\" "
],
"score": 5
}
|
|
ELI5 How a limit in intelligence would work
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s5pda
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu5fzt",
"comment_text": [
"I think he makes a good point. For example monkeys don't understand that we have knowledge they do not possess. No monkey has ever asked any scientist or handler any question whatsoever. They just assume that they know the same thing as the monkeys. ",
"The same may apply to the alien vs human situation. There may be \"intelligent\" concepts that apply to aliens that do not apply to humans. For example the ability to see the different outcomes based on the decision you are about to make. That may be a sense that is inherent for an alien. ",
"With that in mind. I can see how it would be almost impossible to visualize how exactly a superior race would act and communicate with us. What would they have to say to us? What kind of technology would they possess? What would they look like?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu5lok",
"comment_text": [
"Has no primate ever asked a question? I didn't know that? I am really interested in a) the limit of intelligence that we can measure and understand, and what that means and b) our limits, and what that means.",
"I know that we cannot comprehend the looks or technology, but can we understand the level of confusion? What would it feel like? What does that mean? Are we limited scientifically? I apologise if my way of phrasing is really social and vague."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu76tt",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not sure about your other questions. But yeah I watched it on a youtube video. Monkeys basically do not comprehend that you have this wealth of knowledge. They basically think that you know exactly the same amount of \"knowledge\" as them. Therefore they never ask you anything. Unlike a 5 year old kid who will ask you a million questions. They just don't have that capacity. I believe it was a Vsauce video. Search for \"Vsauce\". I forget which video it was. But a large majority of Vsauce videos are AWESOME. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu598s",
"comment_text": [
"Well I grasp the idea of the intelligence that other people have. I can understand the theory behind it on a very basic level and I can understand, perhaps, where the person is coming from... but I think what I am trying to ask about (and maybe not very clearly) is the kind of intelligence that \"those people\" aren't capable of grasping.",
"I cannot come up with quantum physics theorems, I am no Picasso... but I can understand where the idea came from. I can, very basically, grasp the concept. I get the why, the concept seems plausible with reading, and I think that I could get to some higher point with study and assistance. What I would really like to know is what would happen when we reached the point of human maximum. And I don't necessarily mean for myself, but mankind as a whole? ",
"Would it just be a more intense feeling of the confusion I feel when someone introduces me to an entirely new concept? Or something else? (God I hope this makes sense.)",
"Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, and maybe that proves my point, but I am really interested."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu554b",
"comment_text": [
"I... have a real trouble understanding how I would react to/perceive an intelligence higher than one I am capable of grasping",
"Really?",
"I think I'm a pretty clever guy. I got good grades at school (mostly As with a couple of Bs), I have a good degree, and in both the careers I've had since leaving education I've risen to the top within 5 years or so.",
"Despite this, I read lots of things about quantum mechanics, but although I have a very basic grasp of what's going on, I struggle to understand the detail. I can't do anything artistic particularly well - can't draw, paint, sculpt, etc. My memory is very poor.",
"It's quite easy for me to see people who have greater intelligence in these specific areas than I do - and it's not too hard to extend that to imagine an alien race that's more intelligent than me - where perhaps an \"average alien\" can do all these things I can't as easily as I can add two 2-digit numbers together, and where the most intelligent aliens could do things which the very brightest human minds are currently struggling to understand."
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
ELI5: How much "space" is there in space?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s5tbr
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.44
|
Yesterday, I read an interesting post about the heat death of the universe. The writer mentioned there being other universes somewhere outside of our own, ever expanding universe. I have to ask, if it's possible that there is something somewhere our own universe, is there some way to calculate how much space there is...in space?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu6ayi",
"comment_text": [
"It's all theoretical, as we will likely never know. Most say the universe is infinite, in both directions (small and large).",
"On another note, I think it's contradictive of the word UNIverse to say that there are multiple, because, by definition, the universe is all-encompassing. So anything else would be included. Just a thought.",
"Good luck in your quest for knowledge!"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu7hkv",
"comment_text": [
"No, ",
"/u/rsmalley",
" is right - ",
"the evidence",
" ",
" points to the fact that the universe is infinite in size and - get this - always has been. In the past, however, it was merely much, much more dense. When we talk about the universe expanding, we mean simply that distances increase over time. e.g. An infinite ruler with all the markings closer together is still infinite.",
"You are probably thinking of the ",
" universe, which was indeed much smaller in the past, both due to the metric expansion and because more time has passed to allow distant light to reach us."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu7uio",
"comment_text": [
"Correct. Just more space and galaxies and stars and planets forever in every direction.",
"And no matter where you are in that infinite space, a 45-billion-light-year-radius observable sphere around you."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduqnr8",
"comment_text": [
"Imagine the biggest thing you can think of...Now times that by 1000. Then times that by 1000. Congrats, you've imagined 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of the universe.....maybe less."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu7j08",
"comment_text": [
"Again, you're thinking of the observable universe, which as you suggest is about 90 billion light years in diameter. The universe as a whole is much, much, ",
" bigger, however - and very likely infinite."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
If amperage kills, why is electricity commonly referred to in volts?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s5uc2
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.4
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu6odz",
"comment_text": [
"Electricity is used for many tasks other than killing people. For many of those tasks, the voltage is important. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu6g35",
"comment_text": [
"Amps measure how many electrons are flowing. Voltage measure how much energy each electron has. Its the combination of volts and amps that determines the energy you get from being electrocuted and thus how dangerous it is."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu77rs",
"comment_text": [
"Drastically simplified, voltage basically tells you how badly the electricity wants to move through a circuit. Any given material has a resistance to electrical flow, and the higher that resistance, the higher the voltage needs to be to before the electricity will flow through that material. And more voltage will make it flow more easily. ",
"If you take an electric fan designed for 120 volts and plug it into a 240 outlet, it'll likely run at an extra high speed for a minute or two, until the motor fails. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu77rs",
"comment_text": [
"Drastically simplified, voltage basically tells you how badly the electricity wants to move through a circuit. Any given material has a resistance to electrical flow, and the higher that resistance, the higher the voltage needs to be to before the electricity will flow through that material. And more voltage will make it flow more easily. ",
"If you take an electric fan designed for 120 volts and plug it into a 240 outlet, it'll likely run at an extra high speed for a minute or two, until the motor fails. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu7egj",
"comment_text": [
"There's a ton of great basic electronics tutorials on-line. If you're interested in learning more, there's plenty of cool information out there."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:What exactly makes your handwriting look good ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s5x27
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.4
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu7vcm",
"comment_text": [
"Generally, for latin script languages nice handwriting is consistent, in angle, size (the size of the loops, height of the \"sticks\" and depth of the j, g, z, and other letters that go to below the line), and in spacing. Roundness of loops can be a factor, as well. Caligraphy tends to have more florishes, but still requires consistent performance of the basics. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu991a",
"comment_text": [
"I'm more interested in what happens in your brain that makes your handwriting beautiful compared to mine. I cannot keep a constant writing for a lot of time (i have about 8 in total)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9e7d",
"comment_text": [
"Generally handwriting is a motor control skill. It requires sensory information from multiple joints (from the shoulder/elbow to the finger tips) to feel the friction of the writing instrument on the writing surface. ",
"To improve, one usually needs to practice good penmanship a considerable amount (likely more than when you originally learned due to less plasticity in your brain today). "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9gx9",
"comment_text": [
"Can't really agree with the last part, the more I write per day the uglier it looks "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9teo",
"comment_text": [
"I suspect the old chestnut, \"practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect\" applies. Don't write (you're relying on muscle memory that was learned years ago), slowly do penmanship exercises (like the ones you did in elementry school). "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:What would happen if we divided the cost of things by 10?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s602v
| 0
| true
| false
| 0
|
What I mean is, things getting more expensive as they are, what would happen if everyone just agreed to knock a 0 off the end of things. Pennies are pretty much pointless now anyway, so it would give them a purpose.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduadam",
"comment_text": [
"Probably not a whole lot. There might be some weirdness as the initial switch is happening but, eventually, people would get used to prices & wages being lower.",
"If you look at the other side of things, A dollar is worth about 60 Indian Rupees and 100 Japanese Yen & they're able to function just fine with higher numbers on their price tags."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9kg0",
"comment_text": [
"So, you're saying something would happen?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9kg0",
"comment_text": [
"So, you're saying something would happen?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9l8i",
"comment_text": [
"I'm actually just going to retract my post. I think this requires too much speculation on my part for me to post."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdueghk",
"comment_text": [
"i'm after speculation pal, shame i missed your comment"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: With just my eyes, why can I look totally left, right, cross-eyed but not apart (left with the left eye, right with the right)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s62ew
| 26
| true
| false
| 0.74
|
If they can make the movements of far right and far left together, why not separate actions, like a lizard?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu8mo8",
"comment_text": [
"Our eye's aren't wired that way.",
"We evolved our eyes to give us binocular vision which greatly improves depth perception and is almost always present in predators (of which humans are).",
"Being able to split focus like that isn't all that valuable because our field of view isn't wide enough. There's more value in seeing what we can see really well then being able to see a little bit more less well."
],
"score": 13
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc4v0",
"comment_text": [
"To focus on something close to your nose, your eyes have to turn inwards to both be pointing at the object. In order to see something far away, the most your eyes will ever have to turn is straight forward. No reason to turn your eyes that way means your brain has a hard time doing so. You can but it's difficult."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cducpyl",
"comment_text": [
"I can do it. Not as easily as going cross eyed, and it tends to give me a headache really quickly. So, thanks for that!"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdubj90",
"comment_text": [
"You can but you need to train the brain to work that way. Its not easy, takes time and when u start to get it figured out, for the first little while it can cause headaches. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu8pbo",
"comment_text": [
"The way the muscles that control the eyes are arranged is to blame, along with the way those muscles work. The can only pull in certain directions and there aren't muscle groups that are wired in a way to make the eyes move in a different direction. The way the brain activates the muscles in the eyes is by registering them as pairs and activating them as such. So, it wouldn't be possible to make your eyes point in different directions because that would require unpaird muscle groups to be working at the same time."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do we have car models that are 2 years ahead of the current year?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s63am
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu8vog",
"comment_text": [
"Because somewhere along the line, car designers realized that they wanted to make more money.",
"But, they don't want to limit themselves to just 1 model per year. So they release 2014 models sometime in late 2013. Now we are seeing the next evolution of something that's the \"2015\" model.",
"Now ask yourself, which would you rather have.. the car of \"today\" or the car of the \"future\"."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu8y1m",
"comment_text": [
"So it's purely just marketing and advertising then?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu90pr",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty much, plus they get to put a new model out more often. People are suckers for \"new and sexy\" models."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu99a4",
"comment_text": [
"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed. ",
"You should try ",
"/r/answers",
", ",
"/r/askreddit",
" or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like ",
"/r/askhistorians",
", ",
"/r/askscience",
" or others too numerous and varied to mention. ",
"Rest assured this doesn't make your question ",
", it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9avk",
"comment_text": [
"Think about it this way: if you were to buy a new car right now, in December, and model years followed calendar years, you'd get a 2013 model. Then you would feel like you didn't have a \"new\" car next month because you'd have last year's model.",
"So they put out next year's model late in the current calendar year to let people feel like they still have a new model for a while. It's a psychology thing. Like, I bought my car in late 2006 but it was a 2007 model, so I felt like I still had a brand-new model car for a year and a half.",
"The reason you're seeing stuff about 2015 models is because of the model year being shifted. 2014 models have already been on sale for a while, and they working on development for 2015 models so people will anticipate them later on next year when they're looking to buy."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:Radiation Poisoning
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s67ml
| 6
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
How does it work?
What does it do to cause death?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdua5gx",
"comment_text": [
"You can think of radiation as bits and pieces of atoms that move at very high speeds. When the radiation hits your body, it can knock atoms in your cells out of alignment, causing damage. In normal circumstances, your body is very capable of repairing damage like this, even if it is DNA itself that is damaged. However, if you're exposed to too much radiation in too short a time, your cells can't keep up with the repairs they need to make. This causes them to malfunction, grow cancerous, or die. Too much cell death, and you die as well."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdufaje",
"comment_text": [
"Note that sunburn is literally radiation burning"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdua94z",
"comment_text": [
"I asked this question because of the recent story in the news about the truckjackers in Mexico accidentally exposing themselves to high doses of radiation. The police said that they would probably die soon. ",
"Can one really die that quickly from a high dosage of radiation? Could a high dose cause extremely rapid cancer growth?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduae5b",
"comment_text": [
"Not really. Cancer is a longer term thing. When you receive a huge dose of radiation, it's more the immediate cell death that will kill you. Picture a bunch of people going into a house and demolishing it with sledgehammers. The cell is just physically destroyed. And yes, it is possible to receive enough radiation damage to kill you in less than a second, if the radiation is from a powerful enough source! "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduf92q",
"comment_text": [
"Lethal doses of radiation are when you start absorbing over 3 Grays of radiation which rapidly approaches 100% fatality within a couple days. If you survive you may get cancer but what kills you quickly is that almost every cell in your body becomes damaged. Like literally every single one. Maybe a neuron there, some blood cells, lots of skin cells, bits and chunks of ALL your organs are simultaneously damaged. Your body cannot repair this much damage this fast and you will die quickly"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
Why is Dennis Rodman interested in North Korea, and why can't anyone convince him that he's aiding a brutal dictatorship?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s62ng
| 7
| true
| false
| 0.64
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu8r60",
"comment_text": [
"Its a bid for relevancy. Tell me whens the last time Rodman was in the collective conscious since the 1990s? "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdubovq",
"comment_text": [
"Kim is a man who had his ex killed to suit his wife. There is no such thing as a normal friendship with a murderous dictator."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdu9eua",
"comment_text": [
"Have you listened to him speak? His capacity for rational thought is gone."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc20h",
"comment_text": [
"Rodman is just a simple fuck (brain damaged) incapable of understanding ethics and morality. He functions at the level of 2 or 3 year old...me, me, me. Write him off folks. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdudamg",
"comment_text": [
"Hate to admit it, but as far as North Korea is concerned my entire perspective of that place has been shaped and molded by the media. Dennis Rodman on the other hand, has actually been there."
],
"score": 4
}
|
|
ELI5: Where does iTunes think all my stolen music comes from?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6den
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.64
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc5y8",
"comment_text": [
"iTunes doesn't \"think\" anything. "
],
"score": 15
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdud932",
"comment_text": [
"Regarding your edit, iTunes gathers information about what music you have, how often you listen, what your playlists are, etc for the purpose of providing music recommendations and better Genius results."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdud8u4",
"comment_text": [
"iTunes is checking your library for iTunes purchases that you are not entitled to (files purchased on someone else's iTunes account). If your mp3 is not listed as being someone else's iTunes purchase (torrented, ripped from CD, created on your own, etc), then it doesn't do anything to the file. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduhbci",
"comment_text": [
"It's not their job to care nor is in their interests to worry about it. As long as you keep buying iPods & iPhones and keep buying some shit from the iTunes store, Apple's making money."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduxobg",
"comment_text": [
"Relax, Skynet is not yet aware."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: If the government is low on money, why can't we print more?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6b30
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.29
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdubcnn",
"comment_text": [
"Imagine everyone has $100 a week to buy their groceries. Prices will reflect how much people can get. $2 for a loaf of bread, $5 for milk, $3 for a pound of Bacon, etc.",
"Now if everyone has $100,000? Well now it's $2,000 for a loaf of bred, $5,000 for a bag of milk, and $3,000 for a pound of bacon. "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdub6og",
"comment_text": [
"We do, but we can't do too much or inflation will get out of control and prices will rise."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc10g",
"comment_text": [
"It's not about money, it's about spending power. Money have value because it is scarce. If money were more readily available, the value of that money would decrease, so the $2.50 worth of money is not longer as valuable as a loaf of bread, so... prices increase. This is called \"inflation.\"",
"If things get bad enough, you end up ",
"buying bread with wheel barrows"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdub7lo",
"comment_text": [
"Ok, so would you please be able to explain what inflation is and how it affects prices?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc2di",
"comment_text": [
"Oh, I see, so the more money people have, the higher the prices can be put up. Thanks for explaining that for me :)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How did humans discover cooking in the first place?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6815
| 20
| true
| false
| 0.76
|
have explained cooking food is good for you, but how was this discovery even made? Why would it occur to a caveman or cavewoman that the food will taste better/be more nutritious if it was heated over a flame? Did a cow just trip and fall in a fire, and a nearby neanderthal thought it smelled good? I realize this is basically that old strip, but I'd seriously like to know.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdubekz",
"comment_text": [
"I saw a thing on a documentary once where the anthropologist was talking about how people ate their food before cooking. The type of things that early hominids used to eat included lots of tough roots and raw meats. (And fruits, nuts and bugs when you found them.) Basically you needed either a strong jaw/jaw muscles or you needed to to pound everything with a rock to help tenderize it. I heard someplace else that humans have some sort of mutation in our jaws which weakens them with respect to other primates so the only option was to pound things with rocks.",
"This same anthropologist was demonstrating the technique for a TV show and by accident the rocks that he was using created a spark on the ground nearby and started to smoulder some grass. Some intrepid cave person probably just let the meat they were tenderizing burn in the flames, liked the taste and the rest is history.",
"Of course there would have been other cave people that liked the old \"blue meat\" flavor but the thing about cooking is that it makes food safer to eat and it also saves you a lot of time that you would otherwise waste in either chewing your food or pounding it with a rock. (And we're talking ",
" out of every day.) You could use that time to invent iron tools, ipods, and deodorant and thus gain an edge on your competition who would be forced to adopt cooking or die out. ",
"Also humans get bored a lot and the more intrepid ones like to try crazy new stuff. I guess it's like Rule 34 but with everything instead of just porn. Usually risk doesn't pay off for individuals but in the long run many individual risks can pay off in a big way for a society.",
"Edit: The documentary I talked about was probably a thing I heard on NPR (possibly on \"On Point\") about Harvard Primatologist Richard Wrangham's book \"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.\" You can watch a video of him and his ideas ",
"here",
" if you have more time then I do. I'm not 100% sure if he talks about tenderizing meat by pounding it with rocks but what's clear is that you can't support a large ",
" brain ",
"unless you eat meat",
" (or unless you have access to a bunch of other modern technology which was unavailable millions of years ago.) If you try then you'll be spending 9 hours a day just chewing your food.",
"Once you start eating meat, which is nutritious and high in calories, ",
"then you can start evolving a smaller jaw (because more calories = less chewing) and supporting a bigger brain.",
". If you cut the meat up into tiny bits or pound it with a rock then you need to chew it even less and with thousands of early humans pounding rocks together over millions of years, someone somewhere probably started a fire."
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduc57n",
"comment_text": [
"I heard someplace else that humans have some sort of mutation in our jaws which weakens them with respect to other primates so the only option was to pound things with rocks.",
"Hominid jaws have become progressively small to accommodate larger brains."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdufcxh",
"comment_text": [
"There is a bigger story to our jaws.",
"Humans were not the first to make fire or cook food. Our non-human ancestors started doing it, and we are the result of that progression.",
"Cooking food unlocks more of the chemical energy within the food, it lets us process it and get more calories for less work hunting. This higher calorie food allows us to have larger brains. Our brains are very large in proportion to our body, it consumes 20% of our daily Calorie usage. It is simply too high of a Calorie demand for a non-cooked food diet.",
"Cooking food also makes it easier to chew, reduces the need for a jaw, allows the brain to get bigger. Cooking simultaneously enabled a smaller jaw and a bigger brain."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdud906",
"comment_text": [
"Seriously? \"humans just get bored a lot\" I don't get how this becomes the top 'answer.' It is a total guess, and a wrong one at that, which I thought Mods asked posters not to do. Check the rules on the right if confused. ",
"Fire is not the only way to cook things.",
"This documentary sounds suspect, the anthropologist got it backwards. We had stronger jaws, more teeth, and larger teeth, all for processing large amounts of raw food. These features shrank and receded as we developed cooking techniques, they were a result not a cause. ",
"I am a trained chef, and have been cooking professionally for over 15 years. There are many ways to cook food, very few involve fire. No one has even mentioned that fermentation may have been the very first way of cooking harnessed by humans. I love this subreddit, but I'm not sure why conjecture from an 'Ancient Alien' show rises to the top, when an actual answer is down voted to obscurity, sorry if this comes off as complaining, but I was having a wtf moment here."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduetx4",
"comment_text": [
"Probably scavenging after a grass fire.\nAll those tasty slow critters lightly singed after the quick burn."
],
"score": 4
}
|
|
ELI5:Why does USPS take so long to process packages, shouldn't their goal be faster turnover to move more products and make more money?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6il8
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdue8er",
"comment_text": [
"I'm currently waiting on a small(under 2lbs) package & I was wondering why it takes USPS so damn long to move items.",
"Because you didn't pay for their faster shipping methods. They could do what you describe for all of their services, but shipping a package would cost more, and they'd likely lose business for it."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdudt1t",
"comment_text": [
"Well, USPS has to deal with all that pesky MAIL. ",
"Their primary motivation is making sure that mail get delivered, since that this their raison d'être. That means having a system capable of sorting and delivering millions of letters, magazines, cards and the like for less than 50 cents a pop. If parcel delivery is not as efficient as it is with UPS or FedEx... well, they have the freedom of not having do to the annoying and hard things that are not profitable. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdul7l0",
"comment_text": [
"Considering that the USPS goes daily to almost every single address across the nation, they do a damn fine job time and cost-wise.",
"The other guys charge more and get things shipped faster, but then they only deal with customers with more money."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv2umt",
"comment_text": [
"Every address and every military base, forward operating station and every naval ship at sea. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduerkm",
"comment_text": [
"\"and long haul trucks.\"",
"You answered your own question! The cheaper forms of shipping are often placed on trucks and even ships for cross-ocean shipping. It is slower, but also significantly cheaper than putting everything on a plane. Trucks are cheap, planes are expensive, you get what you pay for.",
"I use their Priority Mail Service quite often to ship items, usually 2 days to anywhere in the US and the price is reasonable. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do most American websites have .com suffixes while almost every other country uses a suffix that relates to that country?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6pzu
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
For example, New Zealand uses .nz, Norway uses .no, etc. Why doesn't the US use .us? And why do all those other countries use their own suffix?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduft09",
"comment_text": [
"Same reason the US telephone country code is 1. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdufxh4",
"comment_text": [
"We're number 1! we're number 1!",
"...no literally, we were the first to do it, we set the standard, everyone else followed. So other countries were like, 'You know we could always just do a website that ends in .<whatever> instead of .com - you know, so you know its us!'"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdugb0f",
"comment_text": [
"The code system was developed by the US and .gov, .com, .org, .net existed first. National codes are fairly new and the US government already uses .gov. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdufyzh",
"comment_text": [
"USA! USA! USA!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduhh0y",
"comment_text": [
"though there is a .us as well just not widely used."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What are the reasons Obama being awarded Nobel Peace Prize? [serious]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s7396
| 6
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
Maybe it's an Internet projected image, but I see Obama as a warmonger and his administration having been unable to check the peaceful electoral list regarding abroad wars. Moreover, during Obama the military expenses kept on flourishing and the American involvement in local conflicts has been uninspired, to say the least.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujtcv",
"comment_text": [
"Obama's peace prize, awarded shortly after he took office, seemed to me at least as being really a \"negative\" peace prize for George W. Bush. As in, if they'd replaced Bush as president with an inanimate object, the inanimate object would have won the prize.",
"Obviously, giving any brand new US President a peace prize when he is about to spend four (or eight) years with his finger on the proverbial button has a high potential for regret."
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduk719",
"comment_text": [
"I agree with this. And while I can sort of understand that feeling, it really put Obama in an awkward spot. He had just taken control of a country in the midst of two big wars, plus a nebulous side war against terrorism in general. Obviously a decent amount of killing and destruction was going to take place under his watch. And flat out rejecting the prize would've been a big slap in the face of the international community. It was a weird decision by the Nobel committee. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujwnt",
"comment_text": [
"The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to U.S. President Barack Obama for his \"extraordinary efforts\" to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.[1] The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on October 9, 2009, citing Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation[2] and a \"new climate\" in international relations fostered by Obama, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.[3][4]\nThe Nobel Committee's decision drew mixed reactions from US commentators and editorial writers across the political spectrum, as well as from the rest of the world.\nObama accepted the prize in Oslo on December 10, 2009. In a 36-minute speech, he discussed the tensions between war and peace and the idea of a \"just war\".[5]",
"Taken from: ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize"
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumteb",
"comment_text": [
"Have to agree... I think it was a stupid move on the part of the Nobel committee and I can only assume they were trying to make a point.",
"Unfortunately I think all they did was hurt their own reputation.",
"...and give Fox \"News\" yet another thing to blame Obama for when he had nothing to do with it."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdumn98",
"comment_text": [
"They gave it to him to try to influence his future actions. It's like giving your kid a cookie before a long car trip to \"reward him for how well he is going to behave\" on the trip. And I agree with euThohl3, it was also meant to be a slap in the face to Bush. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
|
ELI5:ELI5:Why tossing a ball inside a car in motion goes directly up then down, but when tossing a ball upward while walking the ball will fall behind you?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6t8j
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
I have noticed while periodically lightly tossing small objects like a tennis ball around as a passenger in a car that is in motion, that the objects behave just as it would if say you were sitting on a couch tossing an identical object. However when walking, and tossing an object directly upward, and as walking continues, the ball will fall behind you. I have always assumed that while in a car that is moving at much higher speeds, that you would have to reach backwards to grab the ball, but this is never the case.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduk2s9",
"comment_text": [
"The air in the car is moving the same speed as the car (forward) so it exerts no backwards drag on the ball. The air that surrounds you while walking in the park does not move forward with you, so it exerts drag (backward force) on the ball. You could demonstrate this more clearly by throwing the ball up while riding in a convertible.",
"If both the ball throws were performed in a vacuum they would come down the in the same position."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdugsuu",
"comment_text": [
"Because you are not really \"moving\" in a car. You are seated in a single position with a constant (for the sake of example) velocity forward. The ball has the same velocity attached so throwing it up has no effect on this. Essentially, your velocity from the perspective of the ball is 0",
"When you are walking you are directly moving in a direction. The toss up does not impart the forward velocity needed and the ball goes behind you."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujxq1",
"comment_text": [
"Sort of, I'm not doing a great job of explaining this.",
"Everything within the car is moving with the car. So in effect you are sitting still. If the car was to launch a ball from its hood, that ball will have left the car and not taken the forward velocity with it so it'll fall behind.",
"Maybe a physics student could explain this better."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdugt60",
"comment_text": [
"When you're walking your forward motion is not constant. It swings and sways with your step.",
"Additionally, when you're in a car, the maximum time a ball can stay up is very short, given the low ceiling. When you're walking, this is not a problem. More hangtime means any backwards velocity you add with your throw gets more time to work on the ball."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujs3e",
"comment_text": [
"now that I'm reading this, it makes a bit more sense.... so the case here is basically that sitting on a couch in a home tossing a ball upwards is quite simply the same thing as if you were performing the same action within a car?",
"is this because the car is sectioned off from the outside velocity of the car, in which a human walking would not be?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do people still use iPods/MP3 players when any mobile phone made in the last 5/6 years has a MP3 player in it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s6vvu
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduhko4",
"comment_text": [
"They are cheaper and usually smaller. Perfect for working out or something."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduhllz",
"comment_text": [
"Because mp3 players have a cheaper memory to cost ratio? ",
"Because their phone is old, and doesn't play MP3s?",
"Because they don't want to drain phone battery by playing games/listening to music?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujrdd",
"comment_text": [
"I had an old RAZR phone a few years ago. I'd probably still be using it had I not dropped the stupid thing. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cduhr3i",
"comment_text": [
"I have an mp3 player to save space on my phone. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdujucs",
"comment_text": [
"Some people have an absolute truckload of music."
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do I look good when looking at myself in a mirror, but look like shit in every picture I take?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1hxr
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdsz8ck",
"comment_text": [
"When you look in a mirror you see yourself in 3D. A picture only shows you in 2D. The flattening of your features is unfamiliar to you, thus you dislike it."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1ibg",
"comment_text": [
"when your eyes are closed",
"As soon as I read that, I thought of ",
"this guy."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdszei3",
"comment_text": [
"I have a cell phone somewhere with a 3D camera on it. I wonder If I took my picture with that, if I would see myself as I do in a mirror? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0ca0",
"comment_text": [
"I don't know what you're referring to, but since you're going to view the image on a 2D screen, I'm going to say 'no'."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdszwh4",
"comment_text": [
"I think Micheal from the youtube channel Vsauce talked about this once. It's basically because we in our everyday life seldon see ourselves other than in mirrors where we are portraied laterally reversed. If you look at an image of someone you know and reverse the image laterally you will notice that something is off. But what you see is what that person sees everyday, the face that he or she is used to see. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why aren't more scientists, engineers, economists, sociologists and the like governing our countries?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1ede
| 18
| true
| false
| 0.82
|
I read a lot about how these academics should be governing our countries, rather than the vast majority of politicians whose background stems from business or law. Why are many politicians not academics who arguably know what's best for a country's long term future?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt049e",
"comment_text": [
"Leadership, governance, motivation, and negotiation are all people skills. To govern a group you need people skills. Scientific, engineering, and technical skills don't go far in convincing people to let you lead their lives.",
"At best, elected politicians (with people skills) have tenured government staff (with scientific knowledge and skills). This works well because the staffer can advise objectively without political pressure and without ambitions of reelection.",
"Also, in case you ",
" elect scientists, they eventually ",
" politicians, because government policies arise more from ideologies, consensus, lobbying, and signature campaigns (\"the heart\"), and less from scientific and rational facts (\"the brain\")."
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdsyqtf",
"comment_text": [
"Politics is mostly about setting an agenda and persuading detractors, then appointing experts to actually execute on that agenda.",
"It's easy to say 'politicians are stupid' and the like, but the reality is it's a sales job (in a democracy, anyways) no matter whom you place in the position.",
"The problem of politicians repeating lies is something that can only be solved by a responsible press and informed citizenship rejecting them."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdsya2b",
"comment_text": [
"They don't lie as well as lawyers who seem to make up a huge percentage of politicians. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdsyagw",
"comment_text": [
"It does happen from time in time in Italy. When things get to the point of being really messed up, they appoint what's called a \"technical government\" of people who actually know what they're doing.",
"They stay in power until the parliament votes them out."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0iv3",
"comment_text": [
"I don't know how many of my people you've interacted with, but a lot aren't exactly what you would call 'people persons'. Quite often they are more concerned with their research than with events going on around them. Also, the threshold for bullshit can often be low.",
"Politicians on the other hand thrive on bullshit. They are masters of knowing what people want to hear, and they deliver. 'People persons' don't begin to describe these attention whores. They are much more personable than someone who has spent their life behind a lab bench, and since often people vote based on popularity and not from a detailed reading of their policies, popularity wins the election.",
"This is not to say that I don't think ultimately they won't be good at their job (or at least have the potential to be). They are required to understand complex social and fiscal issues that most academics just aren't trained to understand. They interpret and must choose a course of action based upon facts, what the people want and intuition. ",
"I'm more than happy at the moment being the person who gives advice to the officials on a particular issue that I am an expert on. Maybe one day politics, but for now I'll stick with my lab."
],
"score": 4
}
|
|
Why is pi repeating and how or why does this happen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1jc2
| 3
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdszolq",
"comment_text": [
"as far as we know pi doesn't repeat"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdszy85",
"comment_text": [
"Pi is the ratio a circle's circumference to its diameter. Think of it like this: A circle does not have any sides, so how do you find its area? You draw a square inside the circle. Now you can find the area of that square. But wait, then you have that extra crescent like shape between the circle and square that has not been defined yet, so how do you find that area? You add another rectangle inside that, and find the area of that. But with that, you have an even smaller crescent shape, so you put a rectangle in that undefined space and find the area of that. This can be done infinitely, making Pi have an infinite number of decimals."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt37kw",
"comment_text": [
"A triangle is just half a square.",
"Or rectangle. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdszpn0",
"comment_text": [
"Meant to say why is it infinite."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0ksi",
"comment_text": [
"You can find the area of a triangle because it has definite sides. A triangle is just half a square. Anything with definite sides has a definite area."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why is it always "HIV/AIDS and STDs"? Why isn't HIV/AIDS considered an STD?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1m0y
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
In textbooks, websites, etc, there's always a separate chapter or webpage for HIV/AIDS from the others, or at least it's titled HIV/AIDS and STDs instead of just STDs. What gives? What makes HIV/AIDS "special"?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0dze",
"comment_text": [
"HIV/AIDS ",
" an STD, but it's not transmitted only sexually. It's probably called out separately because it's traditionally been considered the \"scariest\" STD."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0mrq",
"comment_text": [
"STD (sexually transmitted disease), properly STI (sexually transmitted infection), does encompass HIV/AIDS. As everyone (should) know, you can in fact get HIV through sex. It might be separated due to the severity and the fact that it sticks out. Organizations would want to emphasize it because of its 'big-bad-wolf' reputation."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0lv4",
"comment_text": [
"HIV/AIDS are separate because they are chronic diseases that are not necessarily transmitted sexually. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0t8j",
"comment_text": [
"There are many STIs that fall under this definition. Off the top of my head is the hepatitis family, mono and HPV. All are chronic and can be transmitted through various means (mucous membrane contact, saliva, blood)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1146",
"comment_text": [
"Wait, what? Mono's considered to be an STD? I know that certain types of Hepatitis are considered to be STDs while others aren't at all."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:What exactly is the internet?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1it7
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
My daughter wanted to do this as a presentation in her class. I hardly understand what it is myself. What is the internet in layman's?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0ato",
"comment_text": [
"A global pornography network."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt53d2",
"comment_text": [
"The Internet is basically what you have at home. At home you (probably) have:",
"That is a network. The internet is a massive collection of networks hooked together.",
"You can visualize it like this. Say you and a physically close neighborhood friend named Bob wanted to share large files with each other. You plug in an ethernet cord into your neighbors router and connect it to yours. After configuring it and making sure you each have a unique IP Subnet, you are good to go. You are and your neighbor are now ",
". ",
"Next, say another neighbor named Jim wants in on the action, but he's too far away from Bob. You offer to help Jim by hooking up your network to his. You then tell him he can connect to Bobs network to your network. You are now providing ",
".",
"That, in a nutshell, is how the Internet works. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0ki9",
"comment_text": [
"with a giant fiber optic cord crossing the Atlantic so the US can connect to Europe's servers.",
"There are a ",
"whole lot more",
" than one!"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt0wu2",
"comment_text": [
"you are correct, I just loosly made a comment from what I had limited knowledge on. should have cited a source like you. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt14p4",
"comment_text": [
"No big deal, just figured you/others might find that interesting. It is a pretty neat map."
],
"score": 3
}
|
|
ELI5: How does the brain work when interpreting a gif?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1w0b
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
If you concentrate hard enough, you can reverse the flow of the hotdogs. I tried, and am able to see both flows. I feel like i'm forcing my brain to see it as flowing in one direction. Confirmed because if i close my eyes, decide on a direction, then open my eyes to the gif, it flows in that direction. edit: Hell, as I watch the gif and say "in out in out", it changes right before my eyes. wtf is going on? Can anyone explain on a level beyond "forcing yourself to see it in a certain way"?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt3arz",
"comment_text": [
"The repeating pattern is ambiguous. If you split up the GIF (Google 'gif splitter') you'll see it's impossible to look from frame to frame and definitively see which way they're going.",
"Your brain wants to interpret animation as motion, so it picks a direction. But because it's ambiguous, it's easy to switch it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt3tgf",
"comment_text": [
"This makes a lot of sense as I understand that a gif is just a collection of farmes.. thanks"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt3dnh",
"comment_text": [
"Well our brain can't process both at the same time, it's either one or the other. A classic example is ",
"the young lady or old woman illusion",
". You see the young woman and you can see the old woman, but you can't see both at the same time. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt3qu4",
"comment_text": [
"for some reason I can see both at the same time, and I think it is because it is not a moving image. Not trying to counter you but just my observation."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt4yfr",
"comment_text": [
"also this ",
"Spinning Sihouette Optical Illusion"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Youtube Copyright Infringement
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1pbj
| 3
| true
| false
| 1
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1inn",
"comment_text": [
"You could always not upload copyright material. Or you could upload something but make it a review vid and then claim Fair use. You would actually have to review it though."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1u58",
"comment_text": [
"Might be one way. The problem is I don't know if having the whole thing play and then reviewing it will count as Fair Use or if you'd have to cut it to pieces, cut some out, etc. ",
"Remember too that if you dispute the copyright claim legal action can be brought against you."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1bw5",
"comment_text": [
"Whose to say they didn't get flagged? They may not give a damn."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1g6f",
"comment_text": [
"I guess, but I'm locked out of my video until I admit that it's copyright.. ",
"OR, click \"dispute\" and ultimately lose that battle too. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt1u9m",
"comment_text": [
"Ya, copyrighted music is a tough gig.",
"You really have to put your own spin on it to get away with a cover. If you play an instrument try using that. Or find a version of the instrumental that isn't copyrighted. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does the world turn a blind eye to the white genocide in South Africa?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s22g0
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt5awp",
"comment_text": [
"Glad I'm not the only one that misses apartheid, Die ou gaat. ",
"Any afrikaans speakers know what this racist prick's username means? Google translates it as \"the former is\". "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt5cnp",
"comment_text": [
"White genocide?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt5hg2",
"comment_text": [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW_ynjehcOU"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt572j",
"comment_text": [
"What white genocide? "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt598j",
"comment_text": [
"Exactly!?! the stats are clear as day but the international community is wilfully ignorant"
],
"score": 0
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do we only have Black Friday sales once a year? Why can't we have the deals all year long?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2c0e
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
Just a quick thought I had :)
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt7u1i",
"comment_text": [
"Some stores tried this. They found that they sell more if they have higher prices then drop them shortly for a sale than if they keep the sale-low prices all year.",
"People just really like sales."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdngr",
"comment_text": [
"I'm sure you get equally outraged about every single one of the millions of death as the 1 a year that the media tells you to be outraged about at black friday.",
"The point isn't that the deaths don't matter, the point is that the deaths aren't a trend, it's the \"shark attack summer\" of every fall. You're led to believe that black friday is a free for all death pile, but it's not even close to that.",
"My problem isn't with your concern for death, that's a good thing, my comment was that you appeared to not put it into perspective. WAY more people die leaving an average football game then do on black friday sales, but no one is up in arms about that.",
"Saying \"Black Friday is dangerous\" is fun and all, it it gets a lot of news attention because people love to see the one story a year among millions of non-eventful ones, but it's not a big deal."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdv8o39",
"comment_text": [
"Had an interesting experience with this at Penney's, as they try and backpedal. Asked the price of a comforter, not on sale. $299.00. A week later, they had a big bedding sale -- went in and asked the price on the now on sale comforter. Still $299. But now \"regularly\" $499, so wow, savings of $200! Ha. It was a nice comforter, worth, after a lot of comparison shopping, about $200.",
"They are screwed because they tipped their hand on what their products are worth. My MIL, who believes Macy's clearance shoe rack really is clearanced shoes and that using Kohl's cash just to use it up is saving money, won't shop there because \"it's cheap\"."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt8l6p",
"comment_text": [
"because Xmas is right around he corner so people will \"think\" they are getting the best deals for their gifting season."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtb1cg",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah, 6 people dieing in black friday incidents in the last 6 years in the US, the idea that it's a death trap is a massive overstatement for media hype."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do we feel "attracted" to certain people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s1qsc
| 140
| true
| false
| 0.84
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt7f2e",
"comment_text": [
"To add to that are the basic traits that would mean that they're more fit to reproduce. Traits for girls like wide hips and large breasts mean that they're more fit to bear a child."
],
"score": 19
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt2raq",
"comment_text": [
"Sexually, or just drawn to them in certain situations? ",
"(I don't know the answer either way, but it can't hurt to clarify)"
],
"score": 15
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt7ir0",
"comment_text": [
"But why would some people be attracted to individuals that other people would either overlook or would think were completely unattractive?"
],
"score": 13
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt7ir0",
"comment_text": [
"But why would some people be attracted to individuals that other people would either overlook or would think were completely unattractive?"
],
"score": 13
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtb8he",
"comment_text": [
"Nope, because biologically, your body does want you to have children. Hence, your sex drive. You've made a conscious decision to override your biological drives, but they still exist. Your preference for small, perky breasts is in line with the desire for a youthful partner."
],
"score": 12
}
|
|
Are governments truly enslaved by their federal banks or not?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2gc0
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt915z",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah absolutely :)",
"For examples, it is said to have been designed by the big bankers of American (JP Morgan and the likes) and the bill passed on a day where nobody could really do anything about it? First time I heard about this was in Zeitgeist... I know, I know, but there are others too, I' ll try to find the link."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt9d29",
"comment_text": [
"I'm generally, and I think people should be, extremely skeptical of conspiracy theories. You can check out the ",
"Wikipedia article",
" of criticism of the movie. Conspiracy theories are really interesting and fun to watch/read but IMO that's about it.",
"By the bill do you mean ",
"the bill that created the Fed",
"?",
"If so, that Wiki link has a few points:",
"Of course powerful people/organizations have influence. And they use/abuse it. But to go from there to something like \"Congress passed a bill 100 years ago and hasn't been able to get around to fixing it\" is inaccurate.",
"Besides, basically every country has a central bank. ",
"Here",
" is a list of countries that have central banks; the exceptions are the Vatican, Monaco, and Andorra (and even Andorra apparently has a bank fulfilling the role of a central bank). "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdta3dr",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you VERY much. That's the sort of answer I was hoping for. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdt902j",
"comment_text": [
"The term is \"central bank\" or \"central banking system\". More precisely in the US it's the \"Fed\" or the \"Federal Reserve System\". And no.",
"For example, the Fed was created by Congress. Congress could abolish the Fed. Congress could change the way the Fed works. Like, it's a thing they created and could change.",
"But... it was designed to be semi-independent. It was designed that way because Congress decided that it should be semi-independent.",
"I feel like you have more specific questions?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdta34g",
"comment_text": [
"Checking on their shit has luckily made me a more investigative person. Debunking their stuff was easy enough but I had a hard time around the central banking stuff because it seemed so cunning and plausible. I feel for the historians though. No one ever listens to them."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Martial Law
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2o48
| 11
| true
| false
| 0.82
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtank5",
"comment_text": [
"Martial law is simply when the military takes control over the law. This means that the courts are (generally) shut down and military tribunals take over. This is followed by a suspension of things like some civil rights, *haebus corpus, and *due process. Usually this happens in war or a time of emergency.",
"*haebus corpus is the right to have control over your body. Basically, if you are wrongly in jail you can sue with writ of HC claiming you're being held illegally. If HC is suspended it means you can be held without being convicted or even charged.",
"*due process is basically just the judicial process. If due process is suspended this means that people could be punished without a fair trial. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtbfea",
"comment_text": [
"Martial Law is a bit like being occupied by your own military.",
"For the most part business and life will progress as usual, because it's hard to control a population that's too pissed off. However the military has the right and ability to control the lives of civilians much like if they were enlisted: curfews, limits on what you can own and where you can go, and the ability to order you around, and only military laws apply to everyone. Ideally this is to maintain order when there is some disruption that is beyond the ability of the police to handle. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte7l7",
"comment_text": [
"God dammit bob. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtaeto",
"comment_text": [
"I believe it is when the military has control over the law, and can use any punishment they want to keep the public in order. It is assigned during desperate time. For example, after the nuclear explosion Bob was placed in jail for spilling milk."
],
"score": 0
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtagt7",
"comment_text": [
"bad example. Usually used to keep order by imposing curfews, so people who are outside during the designated times, usually night, gets imprisoned. this can help against looting."
],
"score": 0
}
|
||
ELI5: On cooking competition shows like Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, etc., how do they keep the food hot/fresh when it must take a long time to film everyone's judging?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2ont
| 8
| true
| false
| 0.91
|
I've worked in film production before but I can't figure this one put. I know each judge's comments are a ton longer/done in multiple takes so it must take ages. How does, say, a cream sauce not coagulate in that time?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtb92l",
"comment_text": [
"You really think they'd do that? Call a show \"Reality TV\" and have it all staged?"
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtb92l",
"comment_text": [
"You really think they'd do that? Call a show \"Reality TV\" and have it all staged?"
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtgv43",
"comment_text": [
"Some people really need the /s disclaimer, don't they?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtbdwu",
"comment_text": [
"Some shows are better about this, but feature other tradeoffs. For instance, Iron Chef America does have a real judging portion... but not based on the food you see being made. The actual judged dishes are remade later, specifically because of this problem. (Also, the secret ingredient isn't secret and the contestant is told which Iron Chef they're going to challenge, but I doubt anyone's surprised by those things.)"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtc69j",
"comment_text": [
"Well, that would be no different from any other reality TV show ever broadcast."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: If the average temperature a human can comfortably stay in the water is 25-28C (77-82F), why do our showers are designed to provide too hot or too cold water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2voq
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtccdw",
"comment_text": [
"why do we need extremely cold/hot water running in our bathrooms? ",
"Because the way that indoor plumbing works is to mix very-cold and very-hot water together to be able to select a range of temperatures for different purposes. ",
"There's no good way to pre-mix water to the perfect temperature and store it somewhere, because it will likely cool off en route from wherever it's stored to your shower, and the \"perfect temperature\" is different for different people."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtcquk",
"comment_text": [
"Because there are other reasons to use a faucet. (e.g. might want hot water to use in a pot you are going to bring to a boil). Faucets in the shower don't differentiate because they are simply hooked up to the same cold and hot water pipes. A device that would limit the water to a certain temperature would be more expensive and something most people probably wouldn't be interested in. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte6sd",
"comment_text": [
"There are 2 pipes: heated and cold/unheated. The manufacturer has no way of knowing how hot your water heater is or how much of each pipe is being used by other faucets at any given time. The pipe temperature can also change seasonally. The cold pipes in my house are extra cold in the winter and room temperature in the summer. Plus, if the water heater is running low at my house I can comfortably use the shower on the hottest setting. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtfzq3",
"comment_text": [
"protip: dont use hot water to use in cooking. It comes out of your hot water tank which is typically not anywhere near as clean as your municipal water pipes. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtj5pm",
"comment_text": [
"Does this count for Combi boilers? (Boil the water in realtime)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How does water escape from a snow globe?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2wp4
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtd4oh",
"comment_text": [
"The globe is more like a fishbowl than a globe. The bottom, where the scenery is attached is actually glue in place after filling. Eventually, shocks from normal handling and age compromise the glue joint and the water escapes, mainly as vapor created by the pressure of the water expanding in a closed vessel."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdl9g",
"comment_text": [
"That totally makes sense. Thanks for answering!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtchx6",
"comment_text": [
"Leaks out."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtd10t",
"comment_text": [
"It leaks out slowly and evaporates faster than more can leak out."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtcrb9",
"comment_text": [
"There's no water around the base, assuming it's not that much at a time?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
Eli5: Why don't we have circular USB ports?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s2zph
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdkqg",
"comment_text": [
"Inside the USB port are several electrical pins that need to line up between the plug and the socket. With a round port, there would be no good way to have more than a couple of electrical pins (as nested circles), which isn't enough to comply with the USB standard."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdsm0",
"comment_text": [
"Incidentally this is why the Apple lightning cable (which is reversible ) is expensive. To get around the problem they put a chip in the cable that detects the power pins then changes the data pins to match.",
"It isn't round but it is flat and identical on both sides."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtn4ja",
"comment_text": [
"Apple's solution only increases the complexity of the cable. The connector remains as small as possible and the connector in the device is smaller and more simple. Their goal is thinner devices, so pushing the problem to the cable isn't an issue."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtg8ht",
"comment_text": [
"Would it not be easier to put 2 of every type of pin, and arrange them symmetrically?",
"e.g. ",
"? ",
"(I know these might not correspond to a real cable, it's just an example). If they're arranged this way, surely it wouldn't matter if the cable were upside down or not - or would this make the connector too big?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtiaud",
"comment_text": [
"Doubling the connections doubles the cost and size times the number of units produced."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do ads use phrases like "one weird trick", "discovered by a mom", and "doctors hate her"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s322u
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
These seem like such huge red flags that the ad is total BS. Does it really get people to click?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte6o7",
"comment_text": [
"because people don't trust big corporations and hope there is some kind of loophole in life,",
"basically what you do is imply this person (not corporation) found this loophole and is willing to share "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtgv76",
"comment_text": [
"Lazy people will look at these ads like some quick-fix they've always been looking for. The ads are just BS and only .001% of the people who see them will respond to them, however that's still money in the pockets of the ad owner."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte45i",
"comment_text": [
"Aparently, not all peaople are aware of this.",
"It sound pretty simple and people tend to accept simple explanations easier."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtimp0",
"comment_text": [
"Slate actually tackled this question earlier this year : ",
"Link Here",
"Basically, it's just what others have said-- there's a number of people out there that suspect \"the establishment\" is purposefully holding solutions or cures for everyday life. For instance, some people believe drug companies actually have a cure for most types of cancer but have shelved it because drug companies can't make money off of people who no longer have cancer. These ads play into those kinds of suspicions.",
"The \"one weird trick\" is a low-stakes way to pique our curiosity-- even if we don't need the fix offered by the ad, we are intrigued to find out what this one trick is so we click away. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtk0ug",
"comment_text": [
"Marketing analyst here. While I haven't personally worked on a campaign that used any of these phrases, I guarantee that whoever is running those ads tested many different ads, is probably continuing to try new ads, and that they are using the winners.",
"One consideration is that the goal isn't merely to generate clicks, it's to generate purchases. If the product itself is questionable, you sort of want the ad to be suspicious. You're paying for every click (typically), and you don't want to waste clicks on people who won't buy the product anyway. So it's best that the ad appeal specifically to those people who might fork over money.",
"Also keep in mind that you probably ",
" to be skeptical of these tag-lines. Those really are interest-piquing phrases, but after you've seen them a few times, you realize they're just tricks without substance. Successful marketing techniques almost always get used beyond their ideal lifespan, just because it takes time to react and create new material. Also, some people will just copy what worked, without checking carefully whether it's still working. (This is less of an issue in online marketing where measurement tends to be pretty straightforward and immediate, but that's not the case with other channels such as television commercials.)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:How can journalist determine there were "40.000 people at the protest" ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s324o
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
I wonder this every time some news reporter says something like "There continues to be 40.000 thousand people protesting agaisnt the government in russia today"
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtkn01",
"comment_text": [
"And all this time I've been counting fingers and toes before dividing by 20. That's much easier."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte4rq",
"comment_text": [
"they ballpark it, or lie"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtencm",
"comment_text": [
"Sensationalism"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtpl1l",
"comment_text": [
"There are methods. The US National Park Service has a group which estimates the number of people who show up at various protests and other events on the National Mall. Because they are used to counting large numbers of people, they have gotten very good at making such estimates. They then look at systems which will confirm or deny their estimate. How heavily used were port-a-potties? What was mass transit ridership like? How about traffic? If you get an official number from them it is likely to be pretty accurate, especially a few days after an event.",
"For ad hoc reporting? You'll be lucky to get something within a factor of 10, eg a reported 1,000 people is likely between 100 and 10,000 people. And people are likely to overestimate.",
"For example I reported on an event that I estimated had about 3,000 people. I did this by counting what seemed to be a representative sub-collection of them and then multiplying it across the whole area. In retrospect, while my sample area was likely representative of the \"populated\" areas on the street, I had forgotten to factor in the fact that large areas were filled with miscellaneous crap and had no people at all. My later estimate is that there were about 2,000 people there."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdte6qn",
"comment_text": [
"Simply count the number of feet and divide by two. ",
"They mostly estimate it from the density of the crowd multiplied by the area they cover."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: last night I tried smoking some weed, I've smoked about 7-10 times in my life but never once I've got a "high" from it, not even a little relaxation, nothing... Why is this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s30g5
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdteami",
"comment_text": [
"Just one snort of coke might have only a somewhat subtle effect, depending upon its potency. I've personally done a bit of cocaine and felt nothing, other than some numbness in my nose. But when I did a large amount of more potent cocaine, I definitely felt the effects. ",
"I'd not assume that you are \"immune\" to psychoactive drugs based on the experiences you've related. Different people do have different responses. And with uncontrolled drugs like these, you rarely know what the actual dosage is. ",
"I also don't think that the mechanisms of action for cocaine and marijuana are the same, although there may be some overlap. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdthz0d",
"comment_text": [
"Ok I'll stick with pot, not legal but noone really cares where I live... thanks again for your time :)"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdofq",
"comment_text": [
"Oregano?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdozm",
"comment_text": [
"Please elaborate?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtdp8n",
"comment_text": [
"I've never heard of a definitive reason for it. It isn't unusual for people to try marijuana a few times before feeling the psychoactive effects, and I have read of a few other people like yourself who try quite a few times. And it seems that once it \"kicks in\" that first time, then all subsequent uses have the effect. ",
"I would guess that there's some neurochemical effect going on, but I've never read of a scientific explanation. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
If we can control our thoughts and daydreams, why can't we control our dreams?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s33sn
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
Example: I can look at someone and imagine having sex with them but I fall asleep and can't control anything. Why is this?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtenxo",
"comment_text": [
"With practice, some people can. Google \"lucid dreaming\". "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtf58u",
"comment_text": [
"I have been lucid dreaming lately. Not often though and I'm not too good at it. I mainly just fly and stuff. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtewt7",
"comment_text": [
"As other posters have said, you ",
" control your dreams. You just need to get the skill.",
"As to why you normally can't, is because the rational part of your brain (and I think your memory) shut down while you're dreaming. That's why you can dream about being attacked by a blue possum riding a unicycle while you're naked in front of your crush and completely believe it. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtixyo",
"comment_text": [
"I'm sex god"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdteo20",
"comment_text": [
"You can control your dreams. It takes work but it can be done. I suggest checking out ",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/luciddreaming"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What does it mean when a company "writes something off"? Can I write something off?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3516
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.86
|
A link for your amusement while you're answering my question...
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdteybl",
"comment_text": [
"Yes. You can. Let's say you loan me $20. I promise to pay you back next week. ",
"A week passes. I promise it will be another week... Tops!",
"Two more weeks pass. I stop returning your emails. ",
"You basically say 'well, I don't think I am ever getting that money back.' And you put it out of your mind.",
"If you actually kept a record of the loan, you could write it off by marking that line as 'unrecoverable' and a loss rather than a debt owed to you. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdteypa",
"comment_text": [
"It just means they count is as a loss, and stop keeping track of it.",
"An example is when a store has \"missing\" inventory. Eventually they stop tracking it as there and just count it as a loss (it was likely stolen), that's what \"writing it off\" generally means.",
"You can \"write off\" things, but it doesn't really do much for you, because you aren't selling your products, so whether they're used up or go missing doesn't matter. For a company, selling things is meaningfully different from having them go missing, so the distinction is important."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtf2bk",
"comment_text": [
"I thought \"writing it off\" had more to do with taxes at the end of the year? No?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtf80o",
"comment_text": [
"I am going to assume you're talking about writing off in an accounting sense. Accountants love matching things. If you write off something, you are going to have to take an opposite action somewhere else.",
"For example: Company Sell (S) sells toys to Company Buy (B). Because they are both big companies, and they have worked a lot with them, S tells them, \"hey you've been nice, I will give you an ability to buy without paying at the time - because I know you will pay me back sometime.\"",
"B buys $100 worth of toys from S under \"IOU.\" S writes down, \"B owes me 100 dollars.\" What does this transaction look like an outsider? Most will look at this and see, \"oh, S just made 100 dollars.\"",
"And then say B drags on the paying, and then tells S, \"sorry I have no money, I can only pay you $95 dollars.\"",
"S thinks, \"I already told people outside that I made 100 dollars, but I will only get 95 in reality. I have to ",
"\" To do that, you have to expense the 5 dollars in your income statement to show people \"hey, that 100 dollars I said I earned? I lost 5 of it in the end.\"",
" when companies write off something, most of the time they aren't really getting a good value out of it. Most times, writing off is just balancing what you thought would happen, and what actually happened to draw clearer picture for people outside.",
"If you were thinking of different kinds of writing off, let me know, I may be able to explain it."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtf7mb",
"comment_text": [
"In a way it does, you end up paying less in taxes if you write off your losses. In general if you say you have lost $x, what you pay in taxes will be modified depending on the situation.",
"Another example is if you run a home business, people might \"write off\" the expenses of the business. I'm not sure that's the proper use of the term but people say that. That works by noting what things are for the business, and not your own personal use. If you note those things on your taxes you won't pay as much in taxes, as it was for growing a business and the government wants to encourage that."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What are some infinites larger or smaller than other infinities?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s37o9
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
How many infinites are there and what is their order from smallest to largest?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtfxnm",
"comment_text": [
"For finite sets of numbers, we say that the cardinality of that set is equal to the number of members of that set. So if A = {1, 2, 3, 4}, then |A| = 4. ",
"When we get into infinite sets of numbers, it gets a little bit trickier. Let's start with the counting numbers (non-negative integers), that is, {1, 2, 3, 4...}. There are an infinite number of members of this set. We call this set countable if we can make a one to one correspondence with the set of counting numbers.",
"So, the set of integers is also countably infinite. ",
"We can order them like this:",
"0 1 -1 2 -2 3 -3",
"and pair them off with all the counting numbers:",
"counting numbers:integers",
"1:0",
"\n2:1",
"\n3:-1",
"\n4:2",
"\n5:-2",
"\n6:3",
"\n7:-3 ",
"etc.",
"We can also go through all the rational numbers, too. ",
"Yet, there is a larger kind of infinite size of a set. The set of real numbers can't be grouped in this kind of one to one correspondence. The real numbers are all the rational numbers plus the irrational numbers and we can't pair off all the irrational numbers the way that we can the rational numbers. Rational numbers are written as x/y, where x and y are both integers, but irrational numbers cannot be written as a fraction.",
"In mathematics, we say that counting numbers has cardinality Aleph-nought, while real numbers has cardinality Aleph-One. Both are infinite, but Aleph-One has a higher cardinality than Aleph-nought."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtfyjz",
"comment_text": [
"That's not really true. The idea of degrees of infinity is a real concept in mathematics."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtg28z",
"comment_text": [
"Not in mathematics. See Aleph number:",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number",
"He might have not phrased it perfectly, but this is the concept that addresses his main point, and it's definitely possible to answer or explain, see ",
"/u/yakusokuN8",
" 's answer for an example."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtfzwg",
"comment_text": [
"Actually, this isn't true. (I know, it's maddening). There are the same number of each. You can pair off 1 with 2, 2 with 4, 3 with 6, and so forth and include every single positive integer with every wingle even positive integer. They both have the same cardinality."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtfzwg",
"comment_text": [
"Actually, this isn't true. (I know, it's maddening). There are the same number of each. You can pair off 1 with 2, 2 with 4, 3 with 6, and so forth and include every single positive integer with every wingle even positive integer. They both have the same cardinality."
],
"score": 3
}
|
|
ELI5:How do we know the universe isn't actually small and we aren't microscopic beings in a relatively small container that just seems large and infinite because we are so tiny?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3904
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.43
|
Ok so...you know how ants just live in the ground...well it probably seems really vast to them and if they had our intelligence (or maybe they do?) they may also come to the conclusion that their "universe" (the earth they live in) is also extremely vast and infinite. So, as humans, how do we know we aren't just teeny tiny little beings in a fairly small container "the universe" which is a container of a much larger container? Kind of like...the earth being a container of the universe, for the ants. I'm sure there are going to be some kind of laws of physics involved with this answer, however, what if our understanding of physics is flawed, simply because we haven't ventured outside of this "container" we are in? What if we are really living in a tiny spec of dust among an infinite number of specs of dust in a much larger container than we currently know may exist?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtg4fl",
"comment_text": [
"How do we know the universe isn't actually small",
"Small compared to what?",
"So, as humans, how do we know we aren't just teeny tiny little beings in a fairly small container \"the universe\" which is a container of a much larger container?",
"We don't. All we know is what we can observe out to the limits of the observable universe (how far light has traveled since the big bang). And since the universe is expanding, there are (presumably) parts of the universe that we will never be able to see. For all we know, the universe is infinite in size."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtggiw",
"comment_text": [
"Small compared to what?",
"He's probably envisioning that our universe is small compared to a bigger universe that exists outside of our universe, like ",
"THIS",
" or ",
"THIS",
"."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdth2in",
"comment_text": [
"We really don't. We can only observe a portion of the universe, and the farther something is from us, the older that information is( light has to travel for a long time to get to us from distant stars). We can, however, make some pretty smart estimates about the universe around us. We understand some of the universe's fundamental laws like electromagnetism and gravity. These let us paint a pretty comprehensive picture about how our galaxy works and how we even see the universe working. For example, we have a good idea of how big a star can be, and how big the universe is.",
"What we observe is that the galaxies in the universe are moving farther and farther apart from each other, implying a big bang. We also don't see any evidence that those galaxies are smashing into anything else, or galaxies moving towards the center of the universe, so it doesn't seem very likely there is anything outside the universe. If there is, however, we would be fairly blind to its influence because whatever influence it has has been working on us forever, so we take it for granted.",
"Additionally, string theory shows how it's possible our universe exists in a multiverse, and how there may be around 11 dimensions. It's definitely a newer and less-accepted theory, but it can explain more of what's around us.",
"tl;dr - we don't really know because we're just trying to make sense of what's around us, but we have a pretty good idea of how the universe works, and so we have a good idea of how big we are compared to everything else."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdth3jn",
"comment_text": [
"Bingo!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtgd5g",
"comment_text": [
"Small compared to what's outside. Think of an ant asking that question."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Why in star wars does the light saber injure everyone, but made obi-won disappear?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3dvd
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdthnle",
"comment_text": [
"It didn't make Obi-Wan disappear. Obi-Wan made himself vanish into the spiritual plane, using the force, before the lightsaber actually hit him."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtkou9",
"comment_text": [
"The ghost forms of Jedi are their ideal forms - what they would like to be. The ghosts are wearing Jedi robes because that is how they want to appear. Obi-Wan and Yoda look the same in their ghost forms, because they were content with themselves when they died. Anakin died remorseful, which is why his ghost form is him when he was young - the last time he was content."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdti16q",
"comment_text": [
"Wait, does that mean Obi-Wan was naked when he got there? Where did he get the robes he's seen in in the later movies? Was there an awkward moment when he got there where someone's handing him clothes and he remarks on how he thought he'd be a little less naked?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtku4g",
"comment_text": [
"So why does Yoda disappear? He had no reason to vanish into the spiritual plane, he wasn't under physical threat. And since Anakin later appears as a ghost also Yoda didn't do it as the only way to go to that plane and return as a ghost."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtrnjf",
"comment_text": [
"Obi-wan and Yoda both learned from the spirit of Qui-gon during the time between the trilogies how to become one with the Force and achieve immortality, a previously unknown Jedi practice. That's why Ben warns Vader, \"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,\" and Vader acts shocked when he actually disappears. Their physical forms fade into spiritual ones upon their death, but they continue living on another plane.",
"The question has often been raised, \"So how does Anakin become a ghost?\" The truth is that we're not sure. It's possible that he was able to become one with the Force because he was the product of a virgin birth, but that assumes a lot about the nature of being conceived by the Force. The more likely interpretation is that, after seeing Obi-wan leave this life, he began researching and/or meditating on the subject and made contact with the ghost, from whom he learned the technique. This may be subtly, very subtly, implied when he and Luke are dueling in Return of the Jedi. Vader intones, \"Obi-wan has taught you well,\" knowing full-well that Obi-wan died several years ago, yet he assumes that Luke has been receiving training from the old wizard recently. Why would he think that unless he knew Obi-wan was still around in some form?",
"Admittedly, this does run into yet another question: Why doesn't Anakin's body disappear like Obi and Yoda's? Again, a number of possibilities present themselves:",
"1) He only learned enough to manifest as a spirit after death, much like Qui-gon decades earlier. I'd take this option.",
"2) His body did fade, but it was off-screen. When Luke lit the pyre, he was only burning the empty suit out of commemoration."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: why does some poop float and others sink?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3gaf
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtiaec",
"comment_text": [
"There are several reasons. Naturally, poop sinks. However, some foods - such as beans and corn - don't digest well, and can create air pockets. A healthy diet has an almost equal number of sinkers and floaters. In other words, your navy should have just as many submarines as it does battleships. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtjv92",
"comment_text": [
"Holy crap, what an analogy."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdti7ml",
"comment_text": [
"i believe the sinkers are loaded with fatty food stuff"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtk1g1",
"comment_text": [
"It depends on whether or not you are metabolizing all of the fats you ingest properly."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtkmfi",
"comment_text": [
"It was kinda shitty IMO."
],
"score": 0
}
|
|
ELI5: What is orbiting?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3hbi
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
What does it mean for something to orbit the earth? How is orbit a sustainable cycle? Why doesn't an orbiting object eventually crash into the earth or drift away into space? How does something start orbiting?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtillu",
"comment_text": [
"Orbiting means it flies in an ellipse (circle or oval) around the earth.",
"You intuitively understand that something moving too fast around the earth would escape the earth's pull and fly off into space, right?",
"And, if something is moving too slowly around the earth then it will fall to the ground, right?",
"There's a middle speed where something is moving juuuuuuust fast enough not to fall to ground but juuuuuuuuuuuust slow enough not to fly off into space. That's orbit.",
"You put something in orbit by lifting it into space and giving it a sideways push. You don't have to keep pushing it because once it's moving in outer space then it will keep the same velocity forever (until something crashes into it)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtj344",
"comment_text": [
"once it's moving in outer space then it will keep the same velocity forever (until something crashes into it)",
"Not entirely accurate. It won't be forever, all orbits decay. It's usually just too imperceptible to us for it to matter. For instance, the moon has a decaying orbit of 1.6 inches per year. It'll eventually be flung off into space. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtj4du",
"comment_text": [
"You are correct."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtl6bv",
"comment_text": [
"Actually that's not entirely accurate either.",
"The moon's orbit is decaying because it's taking tidal energy from the Earth-moon system. If the Earth and the moon become tidally locked before the moon is \"flung off\", it will be in orbit forever.",
"Reference"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtj3dl",
"comment_text": [
"Go outside and throw a ball as hard as you can. It'll go for a while, then hit the ground. What happens if you throw it so hard that as it starts to fall, it just follows the curve of the earth all the way around? That's orbiting."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why is it that Hubble can resolve images of Galaxies billions of lightyears away, but not Planets tens of light years away?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3mcs
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtk59a",
"comment_text": [
"First, galaxies are huge - maybe 10 trillion times bigger than a planet like Jupiter. Also, they are usually found near a star, and the glare from that star tends to obscure the planet (try looking at something small that is right next to a bright light)."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtmlmv",
"comment_text": [
"The planet with the highest albedo (percentage of light reflected) in our solar system is Venus. You might be able to see Venus with the bare eye but that's because it's ",
" close. Planets are ",
" and they just reflect a percentage of the little bit of light that reaches them from their star, our sun on the other hand is 99.9% of all mass in the solar system and produces a massive amount of radiation in a wide spectrum. ",
"You just can't see planets with Hubble, they are far too insignificant over astronomical distances and completely drowned out by the massive amount of stellar light. ",
"This",
" is what Hubble sees of Proxima Centauri, our nearest star neighbour, only 4 light years away.",
"\n",
"This",
" is Sirius, merely 8 light years away. You might say \"hang on, there is clearly a second object there\" and you're right. It's Sirius B, a white dwarf 25 times brighter than our own sun and 35 times farther away from the big Sirius A than our earth or a sixth further than neptune."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdto48u",
"comment_text": [
"the telescope camera has to have a longer exposure than just point and click in order to let enough light in to capture the images. Since planets are closer, their movement and rotation has more of an impact on the final picture (motion blur). compared to galaxies, which are billions of light years away and virtually stationary to our eyes."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtpkar",
"comment_text": [
"The milky way is 100,000 light years across, give or take. That is 6 trillion times larger than Jupiter. So you are comparing something 100 million times further away with something 6 trillion times smaller. The planet as seen from Earth would be 60,000 times smaller than a typical galaxy.",
"Telescopes have an angular resolution that defines the smallest object they can resolve. This resolution depends on the wavelength of light and the diameter of the telescope, as well as atmospheric effects if it is not in space. Current telescopes simply cannot resolve even the nearest exoplanet. In fact, they can't even resolve the orbit of an exoplanet around its star. Basically the whole star/planet system looks like a star. The way we see those planets is by their effect on the star, and by transits (blocking some of the star's light)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtk0e6",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with the fact that planets do not emit light, while galaxies, well the stars in those galaxies, do."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why was gold 'unanimously' chosen as currency and a representation of wealth? Why not something essential like food?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3saf
| 6
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtluxb",
"comment_text": [
"Because food is perishable and is easy to produce. Mining new gold (without expending more money than you'd earn) is pretty much out of the reach of most people."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtmka2",
"comment_text": [
"As I recall from Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the main character's wealth and social status was determined by his massive cache of yams."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtm2k5",
"comment_text": [
"Some societies did use food as a currency. Most notably the Aztecs, who used cacao beans as money.",
"Gold, however, was used because it's shiny, inert, easily transported, and most importantly, really hard to get more of, making it a stable currency not easily gained or lost except by trade. That means someone who trades for gold can be reasonably certain that he can trade that gold and get the approximate worth of what he originally traded to get it. People don't tend to use currency if they're going to be screwed over by doing so."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtmv1e",
"comment_text": [
"Going outside of the monetary system, gold is in high demand vs low supply, wealth is surely measured not by what you have but what you have that you do not need, a good way to show that is something not easily obtainable, gold, its the same reason 'brands' work so well, its a symbol of status.\nIf you meant for the monetary system, it is because of its high value to small size, trading something else, for exampke, wheat, is possible but would mean a lorry full for a new phone.\nI get that I have approached this from a different angle to other posts, but thought that may help with a wider understanding"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtp1hp",
"comment_text": [
"Using food as money is more or less bartering. It's difficult to pay a butcher for meat with apples when he would prefer bread. Currencies were developed to facilitate this exchange, so you could sell your apples for coins, pay the butcher in coins and he could use the coins to buy bread. Everybody wins!",
"Gold and other metals like copper and silver are good for coins because of their durability. But not every currency was made of metal, it could be shells or gems for example."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How imaginary numbers are used logically
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1s3yxu
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
I simply cannot wrap my head around how and why imaginary numbers like the square root of -1 or something can be divided by zero and be logically sound.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdto84s",
"comment_text": [
"Division by zero is not defined for any number, even imaginary numbers. ",
"If you mean, \"Why can't we create another number, like i, that can be divided by zero?\", that's discussed nicely here:\n",
"http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/53872.html"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtori2",
"comment_text": [
"I think the easiest way to visualize a complex number (real + imaginary) is a grid. Horizontaly is real and imaginary is vertical, so you can identify points in a flat surface as opposed to a line. An imaginary number would be going only up (or down) without moving sideways, a real number only sideways without going up).",
"Another way to represent complex numbers that may also help is like a number and an angle, so you know not only how far you moved but in which direction.( How far did I move, did I go north, south, nw..)",
"As for their uses, there are tons, anywhere you need two dimensions or an amplitude and a direction. ",
"The first use that comes to mind (as it's the one I use the most) is in Fourier analysis. Here complex numbers are used to split a signal into frequencies. So you can know how much you have of each (is the sound high pitched, low pitched, how much of each do we have?) and their phase (are they in sinc?).",
"Fourier Analysis or variants thereof are used heavily in jpeg, mp3, mpeg (audio and video compression), on speech recognition (diferent sounds have different combinations of pitchs so by studying this patterns you can have a computer recognize what is being said).",
"edit: it's amplitude and direction.. brain failure detected."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtp0z4",
"comment_text": [
"Imagine a number line, with the real numbers going left and right. Call this the x-axis. Now imagine that you want to be able to represent another dimension, so there's another axis going up and down. Call this the i-axis. ",
"Now, if you want to represent a vector (something with two attributes), you need to specify its x and i values. For example, 2+3i is a vector going from 0,0 to the point 2 to the right and 3 up. ",
"If you have a vector that you want to rotate 90 degrees CCW, you can just multiply it by i (the square root of minus 1). For example, 2+0i multiplied by i becomes 0+2i, since 2 x i = 2i, and 0i x i = 0 x -1 = 0. ",
"And if you multiply it by i again, you get -2 + 0i, since 0 x i = 0, and 2i x i = 2 x -1 = -2. Another 90 degree rotation. ",
"But you can't divide any of them by zero; that's not allowed. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtp1lv",
"comment_text": [
"Imaginary numbers are just as logically sound as negative and rational numbers are. They are a natural extension of the real numbers.",
"How did we develop the concept of numbers? Numbers were basically used to count things. So when you count things you can either have 1 item, 2 items or 3 items and so on - and so we came up with the idea of the natural numbers - 1,2,3,4 etc., and we learned to perform basic arithmetic operations on them - add, subtract, multiply and divide them. (later math also added 0 to the set of natural numbers, denoting you have no items at all)",
"So now what happens when we try to subtract 4 from 3? There's no natural number that solves the equation x=3-4. So we invented the negative numbers, and now we have the set of integers - 1,2,3,... and -1,-2,-3,... and of course 0. The important thing is that everything remained consistent - adding and subtracting positive and negative integers still works, just like when we only had natural numbers.",
"So what's next? When we try to solve the equation x=5/2, we're stuck again - there's no integral solution to this equation. So we came up with the rational numbers - numbers that can be expressed as the division of two integers (as long as the denominator isn't 0).",
"Similarly (this is a bit more complicated) we came up with the idea of real numbers (numbers which aren't necessarily rational, such as the square root of 2, or pi).",
"So we know how to solve equations that involve the four basic arithmetic operations, and even some equations that involve roots. But what about more complex equations, like x",
" = -1? We know there's no real number that can solve this equation, because x",
" is positive for any real number x. So again, we just invented a new number called i, and declared that i",
" = -1. Surpisingly enough, it works - we can extend the real number field into a complex number field, and everything will remain (mostly) consistent.",
"Note that there are formal constructions and proofs for everything I wrote above (constructing the integers from natural numbers, constructing the rational numbers from integers, the real numbers from rationals and then the complex numbers from real numbers), but that for a higher level than ELI5."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdtr2wq",
"comment_text": [
"Other people have felt the same way as you...they are the ones who came up with the term \"imaginary\", to make fun of them.",
"Let's take another example, negative numbers. In a lot of situations, they don't make sense, either. If you have 2 cars in your garage, you can't take 3 cars out, leaving -1 cars in the garage. But if you are talking about money, having a negative amount of money is, sadly, very possible.",
"Imaginary numbers are the same way. It doesn't make sense for a square to have an area of -4...and saying its sides are 2i doesn't make any more sense. But if I want to describe how voltage and amperage behaving with alternating current, imaginary (and complex) numbers are my friend.",
"The important thing to understand is that imaginary numbers, like negative numbers, aren't real or fake...they are just a useful way to describe certain situations. You could have a completely consistent system of mathematics without either one."
],
"score": 1
}
|
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