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v4ugs | If air and water absorb hardly any visible light, why is a foam of air and water white? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v4ugs/if_air_and_water_absorb_hardly_any_visible_light/ | {
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"I don't know the answer to this, but I would observe that a foam of air and water consists of lots of small bubbles. Bubbles of course are thin shells of water, and so their shape will have all sorts of interesting ways of bending and capturing light.",
"A similar question asking about shampoo was recently asked and answered. \n\nThe obvious difference between the two situations you described is that an air/water foam has a high density of air/water interfaces, and anytime light crosses an interface of two mediums we can say that light will undergo some combination of effects: *reflection* (the light \"bouncing\" off the interface), *refraction* (transmitted through the interface but with its path bent by some angle), and *absorption* (the energy of the light is absorbed by the material). \n\nWhen looking at a substance through only one interface (such as a calm lake, where there's only one water/air boundary, or a bar of soap, with just one soap/air boundary), you see the net effect of its interaction with light: some wavelengths are (mostly) absorbed, some are (mostly) reflected. For something to be white, we know that it must essentially reflect all wavelengths of visible light. Thus in a foam, you see the combined effect of the interfaces scattering the various wavelengths and giving it an overall white appearance. "
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b978zu | Benefits and, or disadvantages of hemocyanin oxygen transport rather than hemoglobin? | Is one all around more efficient than the other, or only under certain situations is one more efficient?
Does the difference in copper vs iron provide any sort of bacterial or viral resistance? Or possibly lower chance of infection due to open wounds? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b978zu/benefits_and_or_disadvantages_of_hemocyanin/ | {
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"I believe there's only one creature in existence that uses hemocyanin, and that's the ancient horseshoe crab. From what I know, hemocyanin is a woefully inefficient oxygen-transporter in comparison to hemoglobin.\n\nAny benefits that hemocyanin provided were dwarfed by its inefficiency; which is why there's only one such animal alive today that utilizes it."
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1a7tf9 | Exile as punishment | Why was exile used as a punishment in Ancient Greece and Rome? And what crimes led to exile? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a7tf9/exile_as_punishment/ | {
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"Exile in ancient Greece was instituted by Clesithenes but wasn't used til much later. It wasn't a true punishment in our sense of the word-people who were ostracized, as it was called, weren't in trouble for a particular crime, and there weren't any fines or anything. They just had to leave Athens for 10 years, based on a vote where everybody wrote down the name of a man they thought should be exiled on pottery shard. The reasons for ostracism weren't always the same-maybe one man looked like he could be a threat to Athenian democracy, for example. \n\nIn Rome, things were different. Exile served as a lesser sentence for the elites when they committed a serious offense. If someone in the lower class committed a capital offense, they'd likely be crucified or killed in some other way. The nobles got the \"easy\" way out, and would be exiled instead. \n\nNot the most in depth answer. I could pull out some textbooks if anyone cries \"source!\"; this is from memory from my undergrad classes."
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4y2pvf | why is it so difficult to design an advanced ai in strategy games when there is a chess computer that can beat grand masters? | Hearts of Iron, Civilization, etc..
Why do these types of games always rely on giving the AI bonuses rather than just making them play better? If a chess computer can beat grand masters, shouldn't strategy games be capable of having advanced AI? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y2pvf/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_design_an_advanced/ | {
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"Variables. In Chess, there are very limited options, as well as best practices. Video games have a lot more variables, and a lot more real time calculations. ",
"I'd more than likely say that it is because there are significantly more variables to account for in strategy games as opposed to a game of chess.\n\nIn chess the rules and possible moves are simpler than a game of Starcraft or similar strategy game. Here is a random quote from the internet:\n\n > The maximum number of legal moves in a position is 218. So a crude upper bound for the number of possible chess games is 218^11797 = 10^27586 ([source](_URL_0_))\n\nWhile the number itself is a rather large number, it is a finite number due to the rules regarding chess. While in strategy games can potentially contain near infinitely more possible moves due to a higher level of complexity. Attempting to program AI with so many possibilities becomes extremely challenging and taxing on hardware. If you want a more challenging bot, you'll need to give it more resources.\n\nThe good news is that we are always improving both in programming and hardware. Who knows, in a few years you could have an AI assistant in your pocket that could pass the Turing test. ",
"With chess, there's only a handful of moves you can make and a handful of moves your opponent can make each turn. Making an AI for that is easy for a computer that can run several billion calculations per second- simulate all of the moves and pick the one that gives your opponent the fewest possible win scenarios. \n\nWith more complex games, this strategy doesn't work. There are so many possible moves you could make that the computer can't possibly predict what you'll do. That's why Google's DeepMind defeating a Go grandmaster earlier this year was such a big deal- it's the first time anyone had beaten a master at a game that's too complex to simulate. And that's with hundreds of computers in a datacenter with custom AI hardware, not running in your off-the-shelf PC along with the rest of the game.\n\nAnd the number of possible moves in Civilization is way higher than the number of possible moves in Go. The DeepMind team has stated that they want to work on a game AI next (they were saying Starcraft), but they're just getting started with that. It will be quite a while before that sort of AI will be able to fit in your offline game.",
"Like others have said, there are significantly more variables in strat games.\n\nAlso, it gets more complicated when the AI is expected to carry out human-like strategies that these games would imply.\n\nIn chess, there is the expectation that the AI will figure out the best possible move, and it is incumbent on the human to determine how NOT to lose. After all, it's just chess, and you're only moving pieces.\n\nIn strat games, there's an expectation of some semblance of humanity since it represents an aspect of it. For instance, if you wipe out a village of priests on the AI team, the programmers might think it would enhance the immersion for the AI to do a retaliatory raid on your settlements with their paladins.\n\nWith the Civilization series, diplomatic interactions with AI players put this concept to the test. Some leaders will be more forgiving than others, some more bold, and some will be more open.",
"Programs that play chess well don't use AI. They aren't reasoning from the rules in some way that's trying to simulate how people play. There are far more efficient algorithms for chess, and the best programs have large database of move outcomes. That's only possible, as others have said, because people have been studying chess and writing PhD theses on it for decades. A company trying to put out a game can't make that sort of intellectual investment in automatic play, AI or otherwise.",
"If mathematicians had spent as much time studying and picking away at the problem of civ AI as they did at chess AI, deepblueMontezuma would be kicking your ass right now. \n\nInstead, a few developers were given a couple months to make something playable. \n\nFurthermore, the two problems are different enough that they can't just take the chess AI and repurpose it for civ. For example, there subterfuge and deception in civ. Chess doesnt teach people how to lie or bluff about an open borders treaty. Or how to get Cleopatra off your back by promising Washington assistance with the Chinese if he takes Paris. \n\nThose are problems that would take more mathematicians more years of study and engineers working towards generalized solutions. But that won't happen soon, because 'if Rand() invadeRussia()' works well enough.",
"Degree in Computer Science reporting in. There are two very different situations for computer games. The first is games where the number of moves multiplies massively such as in chess. The AI that is used here is vastly different than what you see in a typical strategy game.\n\nThe second class of game and the one I'm more familiar with would be the strategy game. In this case the problem is one of resource management and most of the time the problem is making an AI seem intelligent yet still beatable. In many games the AI has to be tuned down to give the player a chance to win. A quick search on Google turned up numerous references to games being \"dumbed down\" to make them more fun - and in many cases that meant to make it winnable.\n\nWikipedia has a [short article on game AI](_URL_0_) that covers the very basics on the topic.\n\nMany people here have addressed the concept of turns/moves and the idea of a [game tree](_URL_1_) that is used to pick the best move however this really doesn't directly apply to resource management/strategy style games as easily.\n\nEdit: a word",
"Computerphile did a great video on this exact topic a few months ago ([Link](_URL_0_))\n\nTo over-simplify, the computer is told how to 'score' the current state of the game then look slightly into the future and score the possible outcomes based on actions it takes now. Then the computer picks the one that minimizes the risks and maximizes the gains. In a game like chess, the computer can 'see' far enough into the future (it can't see the end state, but it looks a few moves ahead) and always make the optimal move. However in a game like starcraft there's too much to look at (the branching factor is too high). There's up to 200 hundred (ok, more if zerg is involved) units at once, all of which move and do things. Not to mention buildings that also do things and upgrades. On top of that there's the other player, and you don't know everything so you need to make assumptions. Add in hardward limitations and there's simply too many options to look very far into the future. Humans, or at least some players, can do this better than the computer so they can 'out-think' the computer.",
"Strategic AI works in two main ways.\n\n1) Think very hard to make the best move considering all factors.\n\n2) Look at all moves and judge if they are good or bad by looking at the tree of possible outcomes. (look at [minimax](_URL_0_) for more details)\n\n#1 only works if the following conditions are met:\n- optimal moves are possible to calculate\n- optimal moves don't avoid, misrepresent or ruin game design (this is actually really hard)\n- players looking ahead can't trivially beat the AI by guessing what it will do.\n\n#2 only works if the following conditions are met:\n- you must be able to mathematically rate game state\n- calculations about move and game state must be trivially fast\n- number of possible moves must be tiny (chess has only ~30, HOI4 has millions/infinite)\n- opponent moves must be predictable\n- \"feel\" of the AI is not a consideration\n\nSo Hoi, Civ, Starcraft, Dota, EU, and all the other strategy games we love don't work with #1 or #2 - You end up with some crummy compromise between the two. \n\nI know it's not kosher to explain with a question but I need to ask. Would you like to play a game where the AI was designed to win VS to let you understand what is happening and have a good time playing?\n\nSource: Wrote chess for windows (I know it's terrible but I had so little time!) and AI for games.\n\nEdit: formatting",
"First off the AI that can win against Grand masters builds on decades of research so it wasn't just thrown together. Chess AIs are written to solve a very specific problem space. A strategy game like starcraft for instance has very different game mechanics and objectives. So the problem space of a chess AI and a starcraft AI don't overlap. Second AI that can win at starcraft aren't (relatively speaking) that hard to write. Writing an AI that a human can win against and provides a fun experience is much more challenging. An AI has a huge advantage in a game like starcraft because it has perfect aim and perfect reflexes. The question is how as a AI do I make you have fun without just killing you. In Starcraft the AI could find and kill you before the game even gets going because it could have a perfect build with no wasted time and at the same time send units out to scout the map and find you with perfect multitasking. That wouldn't be fun.\nAs to your question some games have really good AI's just look at any of the blizzard strategy games they have hit a good balance of fun to play without just killing you (or resorting to AI bonuses).",
"Actually, these answers aren't quite correct. The harder problem is to develop a challenge that grows in a way that isn't frustrating. It would be easy to build AI that won almost every game, but that wouldn't be fun for the majority of people. You've seen bot programs that auto-aim? Not hard to build. ",
"The best AI Ive ever seen is in Supreme Commander 1 - They have multiple difficulties for the AI, but they also include various AI types that utilize different strategies in the game. There's Turtle, which the AI will build defenses and defend its territory, Tech, which pushes for the highest research available to create the strongest units. Rush, which spends every last resource making as many units and possible , creating small squads that perform guerilla tactics and harass other players. Lastly there's Cheating AI, which are given more resources per second at the start of the game. I haven't defeated a single cheating AI alone. \n\nI gather these are all based on the optimum build and techniques the developers found when they ran each AI against each other in thousands of simulated games. There's only one way to start the game, but to finish it there are multiple strategies that work depending on the race that's being played and the battle map itself.",
"It's not. Building an AI, that would utterly destroy 99% of all players, every time (without \"cheating\") is not particularly difficult. However how well do you think, that a strategy game, that hands your ass to you at every turn is going to do sales wise? How large of a market share do you think a chess computer that consistently beats the worlds best players, would have? The cost to develop a game like Hearts of Iron or Civilization, means they have to sell millions just to break even. Now you want to suggest they spend more money to develop a better AI, at the cost of fewer people buying it, because the AI is so good at the game, that only a handful of people in the world can beat it?\n\nThat's essentially why. Deep Blue, AlphaGo and Watson where milestones of technology, built to prove a point at tremendous cost. Video games are entertainment for the masses. A game that could figuratively beat you blindfolded and with one hand behind its back, is not entertaining. It doesn't work. You have to dumb it down to the point where it is a rough analogue to the average human player, then you balance it to an individual players level by tweaking the parameters, towards a harder or easier disposition.",
"All the other replies missed an important fact:\n\nVideo game AI are not designed to win. On the contrary, they are designed to provide fun to the player, while giving the player the *perception* that the AI is smart(because it's not \"fun\" or satisfying to beat an AI which you perceive as stupid). This means to have good difficulty curve, act \"human-like\" (even intentionally make mistakes so the player can exploit them), etc. \n\nIf you want to look at \"true\" video game AI, try something like the AIIDE where programmers design Starcraft AIs that fight each other to death. ",
"To summarize very simply, it could totally be done, but it wouldn't be fun to play against, it might require more computing power than the user has available, it would probably require more development time than the developers have, and if it involves any sort of dynamic learning it would definitely be too much for QA to deal with. ",
"We absolutely can develop AI that can win at these games, hands down. They have better reflexes for a start. Placing that first supply depot and queuing that first SCV takes a human multiple frames. An AI could do both in one frame. An AI could calculate which units to attack to optimally use every single attack so no damage is wasted. I actually developed an AI chunk as my dissertation. \n\nThe majority of the answers here are missing the two most important factors. \n\n1) Dev time (and therefore cost).\n\nWhy spend ages developing an AI that wins \"fairly\" when you can just cheat and make a cheaper game?\n\n2) Real time calculations. \n\nChess computers have as long as they need for each move. If an RTS AI takes 5 seconds to make a decision it has already lost. So either you spend ages optimising the algorithm to the wall (see point 1) or you wipe out low end computers and reduce your customer base. \n\n",
"Chess is a simple game, you don't even need a computer to play it, and set of legal moves you can make every turn is pretty small - just 20(i think) on starting turn and 218 is the absolute maximum(probably in position that never happens in real game). \n\nStill it requires a supercomputer to beat a grandmaster player in a turn-based game where it has time to think, so how exactly do you expect more complex games running on a home PC to have a good AI?",
"Apples and Oranges. Chess is much simpler than Civilization with regard to different possible moves and end goals.",
"Some developer apparently experimented with making good AI. People at first were impressed and excited about it but after playing a while people really hated it and claimed it was not fun because they couldn't get past the AI. \n\nFor a game the trick is to make the AI seem realistic but give it weaknesses people can learn to exploit. Unfortunately that is the better complaint, it still is obvious the AI is exploitable. ",
"Keep in mind that it took decades to reach the point where computers could beat Grand Masters in chess. Companies don't have that much time or the money to spend developing AI's for games.",
"The answer is far simpler:\n\n* One is academically driven and is a tantalizing problem to be solved. A slew of the greatest minds are eager to work on it, have the best resources, and have high expectations.\n\n* The other is financially driven, and exists only to be good enough to sell a game at a profit. One or two random cheeto loving programmers work on it, have severely limited time and resources, and their expectations are merely the momentary diversion of a simple mind looking for a couple fun hours.\n\n(Not to disparage cheetos, mind you)",
"Shout out to /u/Ar3s701 for the correct answer as to why programming AI for RTS is hard. The issue is, in a word, complexity. \n\nI want to go a little further into exactly how chess programs work, why they are neigh impossible to implement for RTS, and what we can do instead. \n\nChess programs are basically search algorithms, they compute a score for each move they can make based on how good they think that move we'll be and then make the move with the best score. There are many different ways you can compute these scores, but in the end the prices looks like this: Find all moves - > Compute scores - > Rank moves based in score - > Do move with best score.\n\nIn an RTS that's difficult even before we start playing. \n\nWhat constitutes a move? Is it a frame? A second? Five seconds? The time it takes a basic unit to move 1 space? For a game like Civ we have turns so this question is solved, but in something like Age of Empires we need an answer.\n\nThen it gets harder, what are the possible moves?\n\n* Each unit can move to each position on the map\n\n* Each building can attempt to build/research\n\n* Each worker can try to build at each location on the map\n\n* Each worker can gather resources from each deposit on the map\n\n* Each combat unit can try to fight every enemy on the map\n* Etc. Etc. Etc\n\nI can think of the meaningful solutions (but there might be more):\n\n1. A Hardcoded AI that simple follows a certain set of instructions no matter what. A lot of story-mode RTS AI use this but it's not really fun for a random game.\n\n2. A Greedy Search AI might simply look for the nearest resources, nearest open space for a building, or nearest enemy.\n\n3. A Learning AI would start out doing random things, by would learn as it played more games what was successful and what wasn't. The caveat is that they are really bad to start and of a game needs a hard AI at launch then the developers have to train one.\n\nThese types are not exclusive, pieces of each could be mixed and matched to create levels of difficulty.\n\nThis is by no means an exhaustive explanation and the problem of smart AI in strategy game is still \"unsolved,\" making it and incredibly interesting topic filled with a lot of debate and passion. I'll try and come back and add some subs/webpages that'll give more detail if you're interested in looking deeper.",
"The reason has to do with the way in which computers can be programed to see the game they are playing and whether or not someone programs it to see it the way humans do. Humans look at the situation as \"what's placed where\" to determine where to go and then decide the next move. Perhaps an example might make more sense.\n\nBack in the day - I wrote a simple Pascal program that would play Tic-Tac-Toe with you and try and beat you. It wasn't very complicated but the basics of it were to look for patterns of potential wins to block, put down a random character or to put one down to try and win. It wasn't very hard but in reality one could have programmed it with thousands of lines of code to strategize how to win. It only would win if you were stupid and let it, which was probably next to impossible unless you also weren't paying attention.\n\nHowever Tic-Tac-Toe has a far more finite amount of solutions (tens of thousands) vs the hundreds of millions of solutions a chess player can do. So building a smart Tic-Tac-Toe AI is far easier than Chess. But again - the reality is that you have to know the rules and have it program (or have a structure to learn and program new moves) into itself.\n\nIn the case of learning chess, one could write algorithms to understand the moves because there are documented moves out there on how games are played. Games like Hearts of Iron and Civilization do not have these metrics (or maybe the developers do hidden somewhere) but alas those games have far many more random pieces that are generated and seen in the game. So therefore learning to play and win at those games requires a visualization of seeing the gamefield and knowing what to do.\n\nChess is more like - here's your pieces, here's a static board and when someone makes a move then you make yours. Very back and forth and semi-predictable because there's only so many moves someone could make. In the other games, you have a limitless amount of variables and thus the amount of scenarios are endless because one could delay doing something for a second and change the entire outcome of a game. THat's why in those games its more timing and luck - too many things that even the best AI cannot predict unless its programmed to know all the variables.\n\n",
"I dont think you know how much work went in to designing those strong chess engines. They are not simply strong because of their brute force calculation...that approach was proven to be insufficient. The process of getting computers to beat strong humans actually required the programmers to learn things about chess that was not understood by anyone yet.\n\nSure you could probably get an ai that beats humans at some game like civilization...but why would anyone spend billions to create such an ai? the only reason this was done for chess is because there was a relevant philosophical debate about whether it was possible."
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bddsdg | why does a car start when we push it ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bddsdg/eli5_why_does_a_car_start_when_we_push_it/ | {
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"A car starts when you turn the engine manually. Normally this is done by the starter motor, which turns the engine when you turn the key. But because the wheels are connected to the engine (assuming you're not in neutral and you don't have your foot on the clutch pedal), pushing the car turns the engine. So it starts.\n\nThis is why, when you're working on your petrol-powered lawn mower, the manual always says that you should disconnect the spark plug first. Because otherwise, when you're turning the blade by hand in order to remove junk and grass, the engine could start. Ever seen those videos on Youtube when they start the engine of a plane by turning the propeller by hand? Same thing.",
"From my limited mechanical knowledge a push or bump start is used when the starter motor is failing to provide the needed power to cause a spark and start the engine.\n\nBy pushing a car up to speed and then putting it in gear you are in effect forcing the engine to turn over which I believe is the mechanical parts of the engine are then forced to move which causes the spark and starts the engine bypassing the starter motor. \n\nBut, I could be so wrong ha",
"let me have a try for a real ELI5.\n\nSo, for an engine to work it needs two things: it already needs to be turning and it need little explosions on the right time to keep it turning or make it turn faster. it need more than one little explosion to get enough speed where it continues turning, otherwise it just stops. you can't just make a couple explosions in an engine that is not turning, because you can only do one explosion every 2nd turn on a very exact moment.\n\nSo in a normal situation the electrical starting motor will turn the engine for a bit until it has enough speed to keep turning.\n\nThe way a car moves it that the turning engine connects to the wheels to turn them. if you don't want to move you disconnect the engine from the wheels so the engine can turn and the wheels stop. that is called the clutch.\n\nSo now to starting the car while pushing it.\n\nA car where the wheels and engine are not connected is moved relatively easily. when you all the sudden connect the wheels with the engine while it is moving, the engine will turn because the wheels are turning. With a bit of luck it will turn fast enough to keep running."
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32cski | Why did muzzle-loading guns shoot large bullets? | I've found an exception here or there (e.g. long rifles chambered in .25 caliber) but for the most part civilian and military muzzle loading long guns tended to fire .50+ caliber bullets. What gives? Why the big bores?
I can see civilians using the wide bore for firing birdshot and also for taking down large game. What was the point for militaries? Shooting cavalry? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32cski/why_did_muzzleloading_guns_shoot_large_bullets/ | {
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"Because they were shooting round ball, propelled by slow-burning black powder. Unlike modern bullets, which are almost universally conical - that is to say, they are much longer than they are wide and taper to a point - round balls have certain weaknesses inherent to them. A round ball in any given caliber is going to be much lighter than a conical bullet in the same caliber. In order for the balls to be heavy enough to effectively penetrate, it's necessary to increase the diameter; this also helps increase range, as a heavier projectile is more resistant to wind than a very light one. It's not that they were using too much gun - it's that, given the limitations of the technology (single shot, slow reload, low muzzle velocity, inefficient shape) small calibers weren't viable for military use."
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p5ice | How often to the noble gases react? | Chemists of r/AskScience, I call upon thee. I know the noble gases has fulfilled the octet rule and therefore don't react with anything, but recently my biology teacher told us, if we ever came across a chemist who does this by trade, to ask how often and under what conditions they do react.Thanks! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p5ice/how_often_to_the_noble_gases_react/ | {
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"There are two answers:\n\nThe first is at extremely low temperatures and pressures. Dihelium, for instance, forms below 7K, and has a bond strength of ~9 kcal/mol, IIRC, weaker than most intermolecular (nonbonding) interactions. I'm not sure how much chemistry you have, but the explanation involves a switch between antibonding and nonbonding molecular orbitals.\n\nThe second is the special case of large noble gases with Fluorine. This is because these noble gasses are extremely polarizable (because of their size and the shielding by the lower orbitals by the valence electrons), and fluorine is extremely electronegative and electron-dense. Linus Pauling predicted that oxygen could also bind with them (it's pretty electronegative as well) but it's never been demonstrated and Linus Pauling thought a lot of crazy things in his late career, some of which have been true and some not.",
"The heavy noble gasses can be forced to react with highly electronegative elements (fluorine, of course, is the champ in this category). \n\nFluorine has an extremely strong effective nuclear charge - it is capable of acting strongly on the fluorine atom's electrons, and on the electrons of other atoms.\n\nConversely, the heavy noble gasses have gobs of electrons (fully populated inner shells), and the outermost electrons feel very little effective attraction to the nucleus. \n\nResultantly, the effective nuclear charge of the fluorine atom is capable of stripping one of the outermost electrons from a heavy noble gas. Charges balance, and bob's your uncle. The resultant bond is *highly* unstable, though, and the system rapidly decomposes back to fluorine and the noble gas.\n\nSpecifically, Xenon Tetrafluoride was first synthesized back in 1962. Other noble compounds were synthesized based on Radon not long after. A good summary can be found in [Science 5 July 1963:\nVol. 141 no. 3575 pp. 61-63](_URL_0_).\n"
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3ncte6 | if water can easily penetrate sand (e.g. at the beach), why is it that sandbags are used to control flooding? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ncte6/eli5_if_water_can_easily_penetrate_sand_eg_at_the/ | {
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"because it is cheap, easy to build and has abundance amount of it everywhere. brick wall, reinforced steel wall, these are the alternatives that aren't easy to implement. "
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4sh4k5 | Tuesday Trivia | INCREDIBLE HULKS of History | In 1904, the new Flatiron Building [towered like a giant](_URL_0_) above the streets of New York City. A new architectural method of supporting buildings on internal steel-frame skeletons, pioneered in Chicago and St. Louis, had made it possible--seemingly overnight--for buildings to float to the sky.
Today, of course, the Flatiron Building [isn't even](_URL_1_) the tallest on its block. Its 20 stories wouldn't even meet the modern definition of "skyscraper," and we've moved even beyond that to supertall and megatall structures.
It's a stark reminder that even a concept like "big" must be historically contextualized.
So! Tell me about the **REALLY REALLY BIG THINGS** of history--Ideas, movements, epidemics, structures, conflicts, Karl Barth's *Church Dogmatics*. Why can we consider it "big"?
~~
**Next week**: We will be talking about the cunning, scheming, dastardly, evil--or maybe just purposefully misunderstood women of history. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4sh4k5/tuesday_trivia_incredible_hulks_of_history/ | {
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"I like big ships and I cannot lie. \n\nYou don't need a big ship to go pillaging and raiding with -- in fact, the [Oseberg ship](_URL_8_), the iconic \"Viking\" craft, and ships like it actually put a premium on shallow draft, so they could raid up and down rivers and streams. The Oseberg ship is only about 21.5 meters (say 72 feet) long, and had a likely draft of a meter or less. But ships like it helped the Norse raid and conquer all over northern Europe, and the design was widely copied elsewhere. \n\nYou don't even need ships or boats as large as that to make long voyages -- though it was not of his own volition, William Bligh (amazing navigator, shit administrator) sailed 4,000 miles [in an open launch](_URL_1_) after the mutiny on the *HMS Bounty.*\n\n[But big ships are just *cool.*](_URL_19_) So let's talk about some. \n\n**English/British Wooden Naval Vessels** \n\nIn the time period I study, ships in the British navy were divided into six \"rates\" based on the number of guns, and hence the crew, they carried. [*HMS Victory*](_URL_20_) is probably the most famous first-rate in existence (though to be fair, it's the only first-rate still in existence). [And it's big](_URL_2_) -- about 3,500 tons displacement, 227' long overall, 51\"10\" on the beam and drawing 28'9\" if it were to be put back in the water (it's permanently dry-docked). It carried nominally 104 guns, though short-range carronades and things like swivel guns weren't usually counted in that total; and was one of the largest and most powerful ships of its age. \n\nThe *Victory*, of course, might only be the second most famous preserved ship in Europe -- the Swedish *[Vasa](_URL_10_)*, which sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, was about the same length as *Victory* though with a much narrower beam and shorter draft (which contributed to her capsizing), and carrying only 64 guns. The ship was raised in 1961, at the end of a five-year salvage mission, and is [still being conserved](_URL_12_). \n\nEven during *Victory*'s time, though, it was overshadowed by a true behemoth -- the *[Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad](_URL_5_)*. To borrow from [a previous answer](_URL_3_): \n\n > The Spanish navy established a large shipyard at Havana in the early 1700s, which was building nearly a third of all its ships by the 1750s. (Ships had been built in the Caribbean before then[4] , of course.) The Havana yard built ships of tropical hardwoods; the Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad was probably the most famous. Santísima Trinidad was originally built to carry 112 guns, but her forecastle and quarterdeck were later joined to produce a fourth gun deck and she carried up to 140 guns, making her the largest ship-of-the-line during the Napoleonic wars. She was captured at Trafalgar and wrecked in the storm that followed the battle.\n\nBut as large as all those ships were, the Lancastrian navy under Henry V may have built the largest wooden ship in English history. The *Grace Dieu* is thought to have been about 2,800 tons displacement, but her building type was such that she had an absolutely enormous bow and stern section. [This graphic](_URL_17_) compares it to the *Victory, Vasa, Henry Grace a Dieu,* and *Sovereign of the Seas*. The ship is [at rest in the river Hamble.](_URL_6_)\n\n**British Naval Vessels Made of Steel**\n\nThe poor departed *HMS Hood* is quite possibly the most famous British ship of the interwar period, and probably of WWII in general. The ship was the last battlecruiser built by the Royal Navy -- the battlecruiser concept, though seriously flawed, had its roots in the Admiralty's prewar administration of Jacky Fisher. The idea was that the ship would be armed with a battleship's armament and equipped with a battleship's power plant, but dispense with the battleship's armor, in order to trade protection for speed. Unfortunately, the battlecruisers became part of the line of battle despite their lack of protection, and at Jutland, three blew up and sank ([this is the unfortunately named *HMS Invincible*](_URL_9_) in two parts, resting on the floor of the North Sea.).\n\nAnyhow, the *Hood* displaced 46,600 long tons (52,280 tons) at full load, was 860' long, 104' wide and drew 32' of water; although it was armed with \"only\" eight guns compared to *Victory's* 104, they were the new British 15\" (381 mm), firing a shell weighing just shy of 2,000 pounds up to 33,550 yards from the ship, almost 19 miles. The ship was the pride of the British navy, [sleek, fast and deadly](_URL_21_). It was [destroyed](_URL_4_) when a salvo from *Bismarck* caused a magazine deflagration during the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941; only three of her crew of 1,418 survived. \n\nSo since we mentioned Jutland, maybe we should talk about its connection to a famous and unusual shipwreck, that of *HMS Victoria* (seen here [in happier times](_URL_11_), as they say). *Victoria* was named for the Queen, of course, and when launched was the largest and best-armed ironclad warship in the world; it was attached to the British navy's prestigious Mediterranean Fleet, and when operating in formations with its sister ship *Sans Pareil* the ships were called \"the slippers\" for their profiles when their bows disappeared under even moderate seas, as they were wont to do -- as you can see, *Victoria* had its [heavy armament forward](_URL_7_) and not much freeboard. [The bow of *Victoria*, as was usual at the time, was fitted with a ram](_URL_13_), as were those of its sister ships. \n\nIn the summer for 1893, the British fleet was at its summer exercises off Tripoli; the fleet was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, a man who was gruff and impatient even by Victorian standards and who drilled the fleet endlessly in all manner of evolution, commanded by means of a signal flag system he had developed. He famously had a history of not telling his subordinate officers of his intentions during maneuvers, leaving it up to them to exercise initiative, while also demanding immediate, unquestioning obedience to orders. \n\nOn 22 June 1893, Tyron was sailing his fleet in two columns of ships, about six cables (1,000 feet apart). He had announced his intention to have the two columns turn towards one another 180 degrees, reversing course, and to fall in at anchor; although this was well inside the safe turning distance of the ships (that is, it was too close for the ships to turn towards one another without causing a collision) he reaffirmed the order after being questioned by a subordinate. The ships turned toward one another with *HMS Camperdown* at the head of the other column; when it became clear a collision was imminent, both ship captains waited for further orders, with *Victoria's* asking Tyron for permission three times to set the engines astern. \n\n[They didn't stop in time](_URL_15_), and *Victoria*'s hull was pierced by Camperdown. *Victoria* had been sailing with doors and hatches unsecured for ventilation; she rolled to starboard and [sank within 13 minutes](_URL_0_). The ship sank with the propellors still driving -- the engine room crew never received the order to abandon ship -- and currently [stands vertically in the ocean bottom](_URL_18_). \n\nTyron went down with the ship, but a notable survivor was *Victoria*'s executive officer, [John Jellicoe](_URL_14_), later the commander of the British fleet at Jutland, which was by far the biggest battle between dreadnought battleships in history. \n\nSo what's a dreadnought battleship, you ask? Well, it's one named after *[HMS Dreadnought](_URL_16_)*, another of the biggest of its era. *Dreadnought*, though smaller than its progeny *Hood*, was enormous for its time, at 18,120 long tons displacement and 527 feet long. But its design is what revolutionized capital ship construction -- rather than mounting a mixture of large and small guns as battleships of *Victoria*'s era did, *Dreadnought* had an all-big-gun main armament of 10 12\"/45 caliber rifles. She was also the first battleship to use turbine engines, rather than reciprocating steam engines; these two factors combined to lend her name to the entire design scheme of future battleships and also to render the world's other battleships immediately obsolete. \n\n-------\n\nOK folks, I'm hitting the character limit and need to stop for lunch! Tune in this afternoon for some American battleships and a famous Great Lakes wreck!",
"The Eastern Front of WWII was incredibly huge - the largest conflict ever. \n\nThe front was almost 2000 miles long, and involved more than 30 million troops over 4 years.\n\nTotal casualties were as much as 14.7 million for the Soviet armies and 5.5 million for Axis forces. Only one battle- the Battle of Stalingrad- had nearly 2 million casualties total. And as many as 20 million Soviet/occupied civilians were murdered over the course of the conflict.\n\nWhich shows that the stakes were colossal as well: the genocide and enslavement of Eastern Europe if the Axis had won, an atrocity dwarfing even the Holocaust, and the destruction of Nazi Germany and the subjugation of Eastern Europe to Communism when the Soviets won.\n\n\nSource: Glantz, The Soviet -German war 1941-1945: Myths and Realities",
"This exact day is also the anniversary of the battle with the BIGGEST number of tanks: the battle of Kursk!\n\nOn a side note, battle of Kadesh had the biggest number of chariots.\n\nChariots = ancient tanks \n\nAncient tanks become WWII tanks\n\nBoth battles start with the letter \"k\"\n\nCoinCIdence? I think not.",
" > Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics.\n\nPardon my ignorance, but I'm curious with this. What was the significance of *Church Dogmatics*? I recall Barth was a big name, but I'm not really knowledgeable in his monumental work."
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2plelc | Can we tell that dinosaurs were cold blooded based of bones and fossils or is that just the popular theory? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2plelc/can_we_tell_that_dinosaurs_were_cold_blooded/ | {
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"One of the things scientists look at is rate of growth which they can see from patterns in the bone. Cold blooded animals have limited growth rates - essentially their metabolism isn't fast enough to sustain high growth rates. From patterns in dinosaur bones, it suggests many dinosaurs were warm blooded. However some exceptions to this rule in animals today are also cited. Tuna fish and sea turtles for example are technically \"cold blooded\" but have some capability of regulating and generating body heat. So, there is given some leeway to suggest dinosaurs might have also fallen in this inbetween category of being half and half between cold blooded and fully body temperature regulating warm blooded. ",
"Hey, what about Robert Bakker's Dinosaur Heresies? He argued that many dinosaurs were warm-blooded. His main arguments:\n\n* Predator-prey relationships in fossils more closely match warm-blooded populations (cold-blooded pops can handle way more predators because they don't eat as often).\n\n* Bone growth patterns, as shiningPate discusses\n\n* Rate of speciation appears to be high, as for warm-bloods\n\n* (Many more points!)\n\nI'm not sure if later scholarship has pushed back on this, but when I read the book many years ago his arguments seemed pretty devastating.\n\n[Edit: Bakker not Baker]",
"Many species of dinosaurs are warm blooded.\n\nIf we use dinosaur as a taxonomical term it is the clade Dinosaura. Currently Dinosaura has one extant class: Aves (birds). Birds decended from the order Theropoda (an order inside the supergroup/clade Dinosaura). Many Theropods were clearly warm blooded, we can tell this based on evidence of skeletal growth as well as skeletal vascularization (high blood flow is a hallmark of warm bloodedness). Also there is other good supporting evidence that many theropods were warm blooded, such as inferred lung capacity (big lungs to supply the increased oxygen demands of being warm blooded), and even tracks showing them running at speeds and distances impossible for cold blooded animals. Also, birds are theropods, and we know for a fact birds are warm blooded because we can study them alive today.\n\nThe things is though Dinosaura is a huge group of animals, there were alot of dinosaurs that were clearly cold blooded as well; and alot of them would be considered transitional - maybe more akin to some species of tuna. I can't emphasize enough how large of a group you are talking about when you are talking about the clade Dinosaura; in a group that large you are going to have huge variance.",
"There is a lot of data and several mutually contradictory arguments, which suggests there is no simple \"yes or no, one-size fits all\" answer to that question.\n\nOne of the most compelling arguments I've come across is that of large polar-dwelling species in North America. Hard to have those around without some form of temperature control. But then again, a counter argument has been proposed that those taxa migrated out of the polar zone during winter. Bringing forth the counter-counter argument that the energy expense of such a migration would be incompatible with what a cold-blooded animal of that size could sustain (there again suggesting thermoregulation). Still, overwintering (which also requires some kind of ability to self regulate) [has not been formally ruled out either](_URL_0_)."
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3sitw5 | Star systems form from homogeneous gas clouds. Why is it the lightest element that clumps at the center? | Or does the cloud collapse uniformly and it's just the fact that there's a lot more hydrogen than anything else? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3sitw5/star_systems_form_from_homogeneous_gas_clouds_why/ | {
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" > just the fact that there's a lot more hydrogen than anything else?\n\nThis. It doesn't clump because it's lighter, it clumps because it's more abundant.\n\nOnce the star ignites, stellar winds may push hydrogen from the inner part of the system to the outer part. However the star must have already acquired a great mass before this happens.\n\nIn fact, the Sun's photosphere is normally considered representative of the primordial composition of the proto-solar nebula. The composition of the inner layers of the Sun may have changed, in part due to gravitational settling of heavier elements, but mostly due to the accumulation of helium generated by fusion.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe picture is similar for the gas giants in the outer solar system. Jupiter's composition is theoretically approximate to the primordial composition of the nebula. The accumulation of heavier elements in the inner layers, in this case, is obviously not due to fusion, just gravitational precipitation of these elements to the core.\n\n_URL_1_"
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24d4ro | what's the difference between human and non-human brains that have allowed us to accomplish so much? | The difference in what we have achieved compared to any other creature is astonishing. Is it out brains are made in a different way or is it one small but crucial difference that has allowed us to leap ahead? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24d4ro/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_human_and/ | {
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"It is our ability to adapt that has propelled us to our current status.",
"While we have one of the largest brains in proportion to body size, we also have the ability to adapt. The fact that we have opposable thumbs make us dominate in handling tools",
"One might speculate that the FOX-P2 mutation sufficiently enhanced our grunting ability to allow language and once we had language we had both genetic and memetic replicators driving us forward. Once mate selection starts taking in factors of perceived cleverness and language fluency, rapid evolution of our monster cerebral cortex may have been amplified by the presence of language. Fire was also a big help - it made high protein diets easier to digest.\n\nComplex communication skills, fine motor control, upright gait, opposable thumb and the ability to plan and imagine self-referentially are the big differentiators. ",
"In the human genome there is an area of 49 segments which are called \"Human accalerated regions\" (HAR). Since the seperation of humans and chimpanzees, these regions have changed the most. These mutations may have led to specific human traits. HAR1, for example, is involved in brain developement and folding of the cortex. HAR2 is linked to the developement of the opposable thumb and some modifications that allow us to walk on two legs.",
"In addition to what was told here, I should ad that or brains have the unique feature of acknowledging the self, \"us\", enabling us to ask ourselves question and make hypothesis that could save us time in the future, be a advantage and even save our lives, and that no other species does, A great book for this subject is Antonio Damasio: Self Comes to Mind.\n_URL_0_\nDamasio suggests that the brain’s development of a human self becomes a challenge to nature’s indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution and the source of a new level of life regulation—sociocultural homeostasis. He leaves no doubt that the blueprint for the work-in-progress he calls sociocultural homeostasis is the genetically well-established basic homeostasis, the curator of value that has been present in simple life-forms for billions of years. "
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1sr19a | Ive heard a lot about how German soldiers in wwI felt they were winning the war when Germany surrendered, is this true? was germany on the verge of victory and just gave up because of political pressure? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sr19a/ive_heard_a_lot_about_how_german_soldiers_in_wwi/ | {
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"This is a standard part of the right-wing stab-in-the-back myth.\n\nIn the last months of the war, Germany had between 750,000 to 1 million absentees from their armed forces. From July, the number of German surrenders jumped, and German morale, which had been falling since 1916, was rendered critical by disappointment after the March/July offensives. Germany took 1.1 million casualties in March and July, followed by another 430,000 casualties and 340,000 taken prisoner from July to November. German manpower, munitions, and weapons continued to dwindle as the Allies' continued to grow. When troops were transferred to the Western Front after the collapse of Russia, up to 10% tried to desert en route.\n\nGermany was not winning the war, and could not have won the war at that stage.\n\nIf they were on the verge of victory, why did Ludendorff decide to seek a ceasefire on (IIRC) the 28th of July? "
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vb1x0 | How does Saran Wrap work? Why is it that it sticks together? How does it not melt in a microwave? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vb1x0/how_does_saran_wrap_work_why_is_it_that_it_sticks/ | {
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"Saran Wrap is Low Density Polyethylene (polyethylene is the most common type of plastic), which, because of the way the monomers chain together, is highly ductile and malleable (very strechy). This is obviously desirable when making something that is going to be, well, *stretched* over something else. As for the sticky part, many brands of food wrap add adhesive (glue) to the wrap, but polyethylene does have natural adhesive properties.\n\nSaran wrap does not melt in a microwave because it is entirely non-polar, and so it can't easily absorb the microwave energy."
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1e1ntt | How long would it take the atmosphere of Venus to cool if the sun disapeared tomorrow? | I have always been curious. Assuming no significant contribution from the planets volcanism, how long would it take for the atmosphere to cool to 25 degrees Celsius at the surface? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e1ntt/how_long_would_it_take_the_atmosphere_of_venus_to/ | {
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"So this is a little bit tough to figure out, since different parts of the atmosphere will cool at different rates. As the top cools faster than the bottom, it will create a vertical temperature gradient that's steep enough so that convection starts up, and the deep hot atmosphere will start bubbling up. To get a full answer for this would likely involve doing a full-fledged non-linear numerical solution.\n\nWe can still do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, though, if we just assume Newtonian cooling. In essence, this kind of cooling just says that the rate at which something cools is directly proportional to the temperature difference between the hot thing and cold surrounding medium, and generally works pretty well.\n\nTo use this method, we'll also need to know the radiative time constant - in other words, if we assume Newtonian cooling, how long would it take for something to cool down to 1/e (about 37%) of its current absolute temperature. This is a bit tricky to derive, but thankfully that calculation has already been done for us in [this PDF](_URL_0_) (pg. 7) where it's listed as 4 x 10^9 sec, or about 126 years. Note that's much longer than Earth's radiative time constant of about 1/3 of a year because Venus' atmosphere is much thicker, and has many more infrared absorbers.\n\nSo, we want to go from the current surface temperature of Venus, 735 Kelvin (462 °C), down to 298 Kelvin (25 °C). Using some math here...\n\n298 K = 735 K * e^-t/4x10^9 ^s\n\n...where t is the amount of time it will take. Solving for t, then:\n\nt = (-4 x 10^9 s) * ln(298K/735K) = 3.61 x 10^9 seconds\n\n...which comes out to be about 114 years. Again, in a full-fledged simulation the top will cool more quickly, and convection will start up. This means hot atmosphere gets moved upwards where it can then cool then more efficiently out to space...so it's best to think of our calculation above as an upper limit assuming no convection.\n\n**TL;DR**: 114 years. Maybe a little less."
]
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4l5dw8 | why people don't send letters using return addresses | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l5dw8/eli5_why_people_dont_send_letters_using_return/ | {
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"Also, you're defrauding the USPS. [This guy](_URL_0_) got caught doing it on a large scale. "
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1zc7gi | And are there any other examples of religions that devolved into mere mythology? | I know the ancient Greek religion is simply called mythology now, but are there any other major examples? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zc7gi/and_are_there_any_other_examples_of_religions/ | {
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"I don't quite know what you mean by \"mythology.\" Most people would probably accept a definition of \"myth\" along the lines of \"a sacred narrative,\" by which standard pretty much any religion has its own collection of myths. Christianity certainly has its own mythology, for example - the creation myth as presented in Genesis, the ethnogenesis of the Hebrews as the sons of Abraham, the subjugation of the Jews, salvation obtained through Christ's death and resurrection, even visions of the end of the world - and that's without including the vast body of popular beliefs regarding saints, demons and what have you. If you're just asking for examples of mythologies of religions that people (by and large) don't believe in any more, there are thousands on thousands: Norse mythology, Finnish, Celtic, Slavic, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, pre-Islamic Arabic, Australian Aborigine, Aztec, Mayan...",
"Much like ConanofCimmeria here, I'm a bit confused/bothered by your question. The slightly problematic but mostly functional definition that I learned from one of my professors is that most religions are composed of mythology, cult and laws, in other words their story of how the world works, the worshipping rituals, and rules of behavior. \n\nIn my opinion a religion turning into a mythology is a bit of an amateurish way to view it, but I guess it's functionally the same thing as a religion dying out. When people say \"Greek mythology\", what they really mean is \"the mythological component of the ancient Greek religion\". So basically, any religion that is no longer actively practiced could be an answer for your question. Conan here provided a pretty good list of some of the better known ones."
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70r3du | -male seahorses | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70r3du/eli5male_seahorses/ | {
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" > So what makes the male a \"male\"...is it that he has XY chromosomes or is his contribution is more sperm-like? \n\nHis contribution isn't \"sperm-like\". His contribution is sperm. He produces sperm, so he's male."
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10lsoz | [META] Introducing your new moderators: Daeres, heyheymse, and Bernardito | Esteemed colleagues, it is with great pleasure that I introduce a major expansion to the moderating team. /r/AskHistorians has grown considerably in the past few months, and all signs point toward continued growth. We all agree that more moderators are necessary to accommodate that growth and to maintain the community we have built here over the last year. (And speaking of, what is AskHistorians's birthday?)
As such, three of our most popular, erudite, and gracious contributors have agreed to take on moderating responsibilities:
/u/Daeres, one of our experts on all things Greek, and especially Bactria
/u/heyheymse, the person to ask if you want to know how ancient Romans got down
/u/Bernardito, our resident expert on asymmetrical warfare
They will be along to introduce themselves in due course, and in the mean time, please extend to them warm welcomes.
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10lsoz/meta_introducing_your_new_moderators_daeres/ | {
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"I'm glad we can finally let this cat out of the bag! Welcome one and all. We hope your reign will be long, fruitful, and refreshingly free from accusations of graft, nepotism and murder.",
"Really pleased with all of these! They're all awesome contributors, and I look forward to the continued growth of this sub.",
" > (And speaking of, what is AskHistorians's birthday?) \n\nAugust 28, 2011 (05:07:30 UTC)\n\nOur new moderators are another very good addition to the mod team! I'm glad that the growth of this subreddit is reflected by a growth in the moderation team.",
" > necessary to accommodate that growth and to maintain the community we have built here over the last year.\n\nAre there any specific duties the new moderators will be performing, or are they just going to help the existing mods deal with the spam, reports, handling AMAs, and so forth? \n\nFor instance, I seem to remember a long-standing proposal for a wiki, or easily searchable FAQ of some sort. That would be a really good value-add for the subreddit, and something which a moderator should pursue full-time, in my opinion. ",
"\"In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.\" - Saint-Just\n\nCitizens of /r/AskHistorians, all hail the censors of virtue!\n\nIn all seriousness, congrats and welcome. May you reign as long as you want, but never want as long as you reign.",
"Great to see some more mods, just keep on top of the blatant homework posts and I'll be happy :)",
"Great choices! Congrats to all. :-)",
"Congratulations, you all. Nice to have you on board.",
"Great news! God save the moderators.",
"ALL HAIL THE NEW MODS!!\n\nBut seriously thanks for being so involved in such an amazing subreddit. If there's any justice in the universe you will be rewarded with a time machine.",
"Avete, Omnes!\n\nI'm heyheymse - you may know me from that one time I talked about Romans boning, or perhaps that other time I talked about Romans boning. Ah, I kid, I kid. Seriously, though, I'm so excited to be a part of the mod team, helping my favorite community on Reddit continue to be awesome. Our current mods work very hard, and hopefully myself, Daeres, and Bernardito can make it easier on everyone to keep this the most awesome, well-run, helpful community on Reddit.",
"Hello! \n\nAs you may know by now, I'm Bernardito. I often jump in to talk about guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency and other topics on modern warfare that I have knowledge about. A favorite subject is to talk about the Spanish Blue Division on the eastern front of WWII. I've been part of this subreddit since it's early days and I am certain that me and my fellow two new moderators will be able to bring further help to the current moderator team, which already do an amazing job. \n\nThank you for giving me this opportunity and I hope to see you all around.",
"Add in /u/iSurvivedRuffneck and you'll pretty much have the complete Askhistorians superstar pantheon in the mod team. \n\nAnyways, congratulations to the new mods. Ave Imperator, [god save our gracious mods](_URL_0_), etc!",
"Ahoy!\n\nYou may know me from such posts as 'me talking for ages' and 'exceeding the reddit character limit'. I mostly post about subjects relating to the ancient world. I really value this subreddit as a community, and I felt that the moderators could use a hand. I will do my best to only occasionally abuse my Imperial powers, and I certainly promise to not make my favourite horse a moderator. But I cannot guarantee your wives will be safe.\n\nThis is kind of an unnecessary thing to say, but I'm not interested in moderating because of power, but because I care a great deal about responsbility. This is a community I care about immensely and I want to make sure it stays sane and safe."
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1j9sgo | Why are some contagious diseases terminal? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for it if its host stayed alive? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1j9sgo/why_are_some_contagious_diseases_terminal_wouldnt/ | {
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"Not if it manages to spread before killing the host. Perhaps it causes diarrhoea which dehydrates and kills the host, but the diarrhoea causes the infection of many more hosts. It isn't about what the disease thinks is beneficial, it's just what happened to work.",
"To add on to what people have said here--\n\nThere also is a fair bit of evidence that, in general, diseases tend towards having less impact on their host. In other words, they evolve their systems to be benign, but still successfully reproduce.\n\nThere are obviously exceptions, but this change happens over time. Many of the diseases you think of as harmful to humans have only recently spread over to humans. Often they are benign in the host that they have cone to us from (or from their ultimate host) For example [Hendra Virus](_URL_1_) in Australia was fatal in humans, fatal in the horses those humans caught it from, but was completely benign in the various bat species that served as its reservoirs. \n\nSo a lot of the 'new' diseases that you hear about have been sitting, doing their thing completely harmlessly in some other species for a very very long time. The problem only occurs when for some reason people come in contact with the virus in a way that is conducive to transfer. (interestingly there is basically no evidence of Hendra, mentioned above, transferring from bats directly to humans--it seems to only work through the intermediary)\n\nIf you're interested in disease ecology, and especially the animal- > human type diseases, Id recommend [Spillover](_URL_0_), by David Quammen. Really interesting, and an enjoyable read for scientific but non-informed folk.",
"For many diseases the mortality and morbidity is a direct result of our own immune response to the infectious agent. In a way we are \"over reacting\" to the disease and cause our own harm (This, incidentally is why it's better to get some diseases when you're a kid with a less responsive immune system).\n\nAlso, in some cases, humans are not the primary host of the disease (rabies, plague, ebola). Therefore, it doesn't matter much to the pathogen whether they kill humans or not.\n\nFurther, a lot of diseases we think as being completely lethal (plague, spanish flu of 1918, ebola) have mortality rates of 10-70%. While certainly not *good*,(i.e. I'm not suggesting you go and get ebola for a laugh) it's not as if 99.9% of all infected people die of the disease as is commonly thought. Some people can fight off the worst types of illnesses.\n\nLastly, some terminal diseases (rabies, HIV) take months or years to kill their host and thus have plenty of opportunities to infect others.",
"Virulence all comes down to transmission. The microbe doesn't say \"well I shouldn't use up *all* the resources available,\" it simply has an inborn capacity to reproduce and use resources at (x) rate). So (A) form of TB can reproduce at (x) rate causing (y) deaths while (vB) TB *(v for virulent)* has (2x) rate and (2y) deaths. If (vB) kills before it transmits its overall capacity to reproduce will be lower than (A), so (A) will be the dominant strain in that particular area. If (vB) can get a new host before its current one dies out its ability to reproduce more will eventually overshadow (A)'s. If a pathogen doesn't have to worry about keeping the host alive for too long it can reproduce as much as it likes, shut the host down and harvest it even more to produce more pathogens. As long as it gets to a new host it can continue reproducing.\nMore capacity for transmission - > less need to keep the host alive.\n\n*(please note this math is not remotely similar to actual epidemic calculations, this barely qualifies as quick and dirty)*\n\nVectors (infection carriers) greatly affect transmission, and thus virulence. This is why something like malaria can completely incapacitate someone, the mosquito vector will always be there to transmit and in fact a bedridden malaria factory is even better for mosquitoes to keep loading up. So far getting rid of the mosquito vector (mosquito netting, killing larvae, water treatment) has been far more effective at treating the malaria issue, if not the disease itself.\n\nWater-borne pathogens (cholera, giardia e.g.) tend to be spread by diarrhea as it's easy to get back into the drinking supply, so humans are both victims and vectors.\n\nAreas of high population density (*cough* SE Asia *cough*) create an environment in which fairly benign pathogens can become vicious quickly and serious pathogens like TB and influenza can go wild.\nThailand, well known for both population density and prostitution has a long history of *vile* STD's, again because of ease of transmission.\n\n*edit: I should really just go find one of my essays from Evolutionary Medicine a few semesters ago)*"
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357h5z | If you are butt-naked in an absolutely sterile room that's set at an uncomfortably low temperature, would you catch the cold/flu? | Assuming this imaginary person was a pre-screened, healthy individual that had never been exposed to the cold and flu virus. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/357h5z/if_you_are_buttnaked_in_an_absolutely_sterile/ | {
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"No. The cold or flu is a virus. If the person does not come in contact with the virus, the person will not get the cold or flu. "
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6gvzlk | why was the european takeover of north america worse than other historical invasions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gvzlk/eli5why_was_the_european_takeover_of_north/ | {
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"It wasn't more terrible. It just seems that way because everyone in the US talks about it, and never about other hostile takeovers of other lands. In fact, a lot of the deaths of natives in the Americas was accidental, such as the Spanish accidentally wiping out all of SA with their disease. Spanish explorers wandered south and found nothing but corpses, because their diseases had moved faster than them. The Americas were more 'par for the course' of colonization, and not some Stalin-Hitler evil combo"
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7vu9gh | what is acl and why does it get torn frequently among athletes? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vu9gh/eli5_what_is_acl_and_why_does_it_get_torn/ | {
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"ACL is the anterior cruciate ligament, one of the major tendons in the knee. It sustains injury when the knee bends the wrong way or hyperextends ",
"The [ACL](_URL_0_) is one of the major ligaments holding your knee joint together. It stops your knee from wobbling side to side.\n\nAthletes in many sports are frequently diving/dodging from side to side which puts a lot of stress on the ACL, giving it an opportunity to tear.",
"The ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament. It's a ligament that holds the femur (thigh bone) in proper alignment with the tibia (shin bone). It's main role is to keep the tibia from moving forward, relative to the femur. There's another cruciate ligament at the back of the knee joint called the PCL or Posterior Cruciate Ligament.\n\nThe main reason the ACL is torn frequently among athletes is because it's not as large or as strong as the PCL. The ACL can be torn in various ways. The most common are over-extending the knee joint, getting hit on the side of the knee or quickly stop moving and change direction while running, landing from a jump, or turning. \n\nYou have other ligaments holding the knee joint together: Lateral Collateral Ligament and Medial Collateral Ligament. These act like hinges that allow the knee joint to open and close below the kneecap. You typically tear these ligaments by making the knee bend in a way it's not supposed to bend (from side-to-side). But since the knee naturally bends front-to-back, it's the weaker ACL that usually ends up getting injured over the other three knee ligaments.",
"I tore mine and it was excruciating. It took my breath away and my knee looked like it had been inflated like a balloon the next day. I had surgery to repair it using the middle third of my patellar tendon (20 years ago) and it’s holding up well. No issues.\n\n(Doesn’t answer your question - but I see others already did. I guess I just wanted to share.) "
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3il2pu | How has Communism interpreted the pre-Marxist Maximilien Robespierre? Is it naive to assume that his concepts of defending a revolution, purging it's possible detractors and targeting the formal 'elite' would have appealed to later movements in Russia, China, Cuba etc? | Many thanks for clicking!
Robespierre's activity during the Terror would seem to the untrained eye that of a cliché Communist dictator; desperate to protect and renew a revolution against monarchies, in-fighting and external military threats. Certainly his predilection for executions, suspicion and clandestine policing, taken along side his abolition of slavery, remind us of more than a few 20th century Communist leaders. Of course Robespierre was not a Communist, had such a thing even existed. His policies and pragmatism, however, have certainly seen echoes in later Marxist movements.
This being said, how have such movements typically viewed Robespierre and his terrorising of France's conservatives? I believe Pol Pot (himself with a French connection) modelled his Year Zero calendar after that of the revolution in France. Were pre-Marxists like Robespierre viable and/or popular models for later Communism? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3il2pu/how_has_communism_interpreted_the_premarxist/ | {
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"Absolutely, Lenin referred to Robespierre as an \"avant la letter\" Bolshevik and had a monument commissioned to commemorate him in the Soviet Union. Trotsky refereed to the rise of Stalin as \"Thermidor\", meaning that Robespierre was the analogue for the early Bolsheviks (such as himself) while Stalin represented the \"counter-revolutionary\" force which took over from the original revolutionaries. Just as relatively moderate forces seized power from the extremist Robespierre and clamped down on revolutionary fervor in 1794. Robespierre indeed served as a role model and was admired by later Communist revolutionaries.",
"One of the interesting artifacts of the Soviet Union is the *Great Soviet Encylopedia*, which thought to systematize human knowledge and present an ideologically correct picture for various parts of the human experience. Although ideas about the past would vary over time, the *Encyclopedia* does provide a window into the the state's position on various figures and events. For the Jacobins and Robespierre, the official Soviet stance from the 1979 edition of the entry on Robespierre is illuminating:\n\n > The son of a lawyer, Robespierre studied at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris and later, at the faculty of law at the Sorbonne. As a student, Robespierre was strongly influenced by Enlightenment ideas and especially by Rousseau, whom he regarded as his mentor. In 1781 he became a lawyer in Arras, specializing in political cases. In 1783 he was elected to the Arras Academy of Arts and Sciences.\n\n > Robespierre was elected in 1789 to represent the Third Estate of Arras as a deputy in the Estates General. In his speeches to the Estates General and later to the Constituent Assembly, Robespierre defended democratic principles and the interests of the people. He criticized the antidemocratic character of certain proposals of the bourgeois liberal majority, such as the distinction between active and passive citizenship; the introduction of a property census, which would create a new “aristocracy of wealth”; and the royal veto. Adopting a more radical line, Robespierre supported the demands of the peasantry on the most important issue, the agrarian problem. All of his speeches were permeated with the ideas of popular power and political equality—an idea that he consistently developed, addressing the people directly and disregarding his fellow deputies.\n\n > From 1790, Robespierre’s popularity increased in democratic circles. He received the support of the Jacobin Club, the Cordeliers, and political clubs in Marseille, Toulon, and several other cities. However, unlike most democrats, he was late in recognizing the necessity of proclaiming a republic. Even during the crisis stemming from the king’s attempt to flee the country in June 1791, Robespierre did not support the demand for a republic, fearing that it would be an aristocratic regime. Moreover, he did not oppose the Le Chapelier Law of June 1791, which was directed against the working class.\n\n > Characterizing as sheer adventurism the policies of the Girondins, who were propagandizing in favor of revolutionary war in the winter and spring of 1791, Robespierre declared that the foreign counterrevolution could not be vanquished until the revolution had triumphed in France. With the outbreak of war between France and a coalition of absolutist feudal states in the spring of 1792, Robespierre insisted on the use of revolutionary methods of warfare and castigated the Feuillants’ and Girondins’ lack of confidence in the people, expressing his views in Le Défenseur de la constitution (Defender of the Constitution), a weekly that he began publishing in the spring of 1792. In the summer of 1792, Robespierre demanded the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, which had replaced the Constituent Assembly in the autumn of 1791; the introduction of universal suffrage; and elections to the Convention.\n\n > Although Robespierre did not participate directly in the popular uprising of Aug. 10, 1792, by August 11 he had been elected a member of the revolutionary Paris Commune. In September 1792 he was elected to represent Paris in the National Convention, having received more votes than any other candidate. He and J.-P. Marat led the struggle against the Girondins and succeeded in having the death penalty enacted for the deposed king. He was one of the political leaders of the popular insurrection of May 31-June 2, 1793, which overthrew the Girondins. Robespierre became one of the principal formulators of the revolutionary policies of the Jacobins, who came to power after the Girondins. Among the achievements of the Jacobins were the solution of the agrarian problem by the abolition of feudal landownership, the enactment of the democratic constitution of 1793, and other measures that ensured wide popular support for the Jacobin government. Robespierre provided a theoretical foundation for the new, higher form of organization of revolutionary power that replaced the constitutional regime—the revolutionary democratic dictatorship, the need for which was understood more rapidly and more clearly by Robespierre than by other Jacobin leaders. In a speech to the Convention on Dec. 25, 1793, Robespierre described the essence of revolutionary government: “The revolution is the struggle of freedom against its enemies; the constitution is the regime of a victorious and peaceful freedom” (Izbr. proizv., vol. 3, p. 91, 1965).\n\n > In July 1793, Robespierre became the head of the Committee of Public Safety. He played a crucial role in the mobilization of popular forces and the achievement of victory over foreign and domestic counterrevolution. However, his political activity was marked by contradictions rooted in the very character of the Jacobin dictatorship. His revolutionary traits were intertwined with the limited capacities and duplicity characteristic of bourgeois politicians. For example, Robespierre struggled not only against the followers of G. J. Danton, who attacked the revolutionary government from the right, but also against left-wing social forces, including P.-G. Chaumette and his supporters. He also insisted on strictly enforcing a maximum wage, and he upheld other similar measures. Robespierre was mistaken in his attempts to unify the nation around a new, republican religion (the cult of the Supreme Being), the fallacy of which he soon realized.\n\n > Although Robespierre was aware of increasing opposition to the Jacobin dictatorship and the futility of his efforts, he did not take effective measures to prevent the conspiracy that was developing against him. He was absent from the Convention for six weeks (until July 26), and at the end of June 1794, he left the Committee of Public Safety. On July 26, 1794, he attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the Convention to censure the conspirators. The counterrevolutionary Thermidor coup (July 27–28, 1794) led to the fall of the Jacobin dictatorship. Robespierre and his closest supporters were arrested and guillotined without trial.\n\nNow that entry has a lot to unpack, but there are a number of important ideas the Soviets held about the French Revolution and the Jacobins. While the standard Marxist line on the French Revolution was that it was a classical bourgeois revolution at its core, the Jacobin interlude held a special appeal for the Bolsheviks. The revolutionary extremism of the Jacobins in Paris hinted that a determined revolutionary group could, in the heat of the moment, transcend the limits of their unique socioeconomic period and push revolution farther. Note how throughout the entry on Robespierre, there is a sense he has briefly stepped outside his halo and realized the radical potential of revolutionary activity. Lenin would write on the Jacobins \"The historical greatness of the true Jacobins, the Jacobins of 1793, is that they were ’Jacobins with the people,’ with the revolutionary majority of the nation, with the revolutionary advanced classes of their time.\"\n\nOne of the things that is relatively apparent in this approach to French Revolutionary history is that the Soviets were trying to appropriate the radicalism of the French Revolution to present themselves as the true heirs to the European revolutionary tradition. In this historical formulation, the Jacobins became tragic proto-Bolsheviks doomed by circumstances to fail. This approach was especially prominent in the early years of the Soviet Union. For example, when the 1921 German film *Danton* was screened n the USSR in 1924, Soviet censors edited to film's climax to make Robespierre into a humanist figure who sacrificed friendship in the name of revolutionary principles. On the first anniversary of the November Revolution, Robespierre was honored along with other European revolutionary figures in Moscow and Petrograd. At the statue of Robespierre, Lev Kamenev praised the French revolutionary for \"crushing the French counterevolution with an iron hand and creating a Red Army.\" Even though Robespierre predated Marxism, by presenting him as a proto-Bolshevik, the Soviets turned the radical phase of the French Revolution into a usable past in which the events of 1789 served as a prologue to 1917. ",
"I think it's not so clear-cut. Marxists generally hold Robespierre in high regard, and the Terror was invoked by successive leaders as a precedent for stern action in defence of the Revolution. But the two aren't so intimately linked as in western memory, the Terror the instrument of the Revolutionary left as a whole, Robespierre merely one leader, and not even among the more ideologically advanced compared to Marat, the Enragés, Hébert (himself a victim of the Terror) or later Babeuf: \"It is very characteristic of Robespierre that at a time when it was a crime punishable by guillotining to be ‘constitutional’ in the sense of the Assembly of 1789, all its laws against the workers remained in force\", Marx wrote to Engels on 30 Jan 1865. And it was Marat who later had a Soviet battleship named after him. \n\nThe Terror is itself problematical (as Hébert's fate suggests), sometimes a reflection of the Revolution's (or Robespierre's) failure to move beyond the political sphere into fundamental socio-economic emancipation, or even \"the reign of people who are themselves terrified\" (Engels to Marx, 4 Sep 1870). That the Terror of 1793-94 had coincided with the fledgling Republic's survival against a coalition of hostile powers naturally commended it to Bolshevik leaders in 1918, but its status as a model is perhaps overrated. "
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3f0n0k | why doesn't the french government just deport all the migrants running amok in calais? | Surely the fact they are trying to reach the UK for economic reasons is evidence that they aren't legitimate asylum seekers, or they would have sought asylum in France already. Plus they must be breaking French law by being in the country illegally? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f0n0k/eli5_why_doesnt_the_french_government_just_deport/ | {
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"Expensive. \n \nPlus, why does France care of a bunch of illegal immigrants get into the UK? Not so long ago there were claims that the French were helping them. The alternative is letting them stay in France.",
" France and Britain have similar economies and development and so on. So why so many people ( emphasis on so many) are risking their lives, to get from France to britain?"
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qarf7 | Is a lazy eye purely aesthetic or does the individual actually have trouble focusing on certain objects? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qarf7/is_a_lazy_eye_purely_aesthetic_or_does_the/ | {
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"When I was born my right eye pointed in straight at my nose. It required two corrective surgeries to align my eye, though I am now unable to see out of both eyes at the same time (at least not in any meaningful fashion). I do have the ability to switch between the two, and often do so, depending on where an object is in my field of vision.\n\nTo answer your question specifically, I have no trouble focusing on objects, but like many people with my condition, I'm not processing visual information in the same way from both eyes. Whichever eye is currently in use will make up the majority of the visual information that I then use to see, and whichever eye is not currently my focus wind up being akin to peripheral vision; I notice movement, light and to some extent color from that eye, but no fine detail.\n\nThis does, of course, mean that I have a difficult time with activities that require depth perception. Sports are difficult, 3D movies are even worse for me than they are for you, and threading a needle is like some kind of horrible practical joke.",
"By \"lazy eye,\" I think you mean any condition where the axes of the two eyes are not parallel. This is called \"strabismus.\" Strabusmus almost always causes a loss of acuity in the \"lazy\" eye, called amblyopia, because the brain recognizes that the information coming from that eye is \"wrong\" and not useful. As a result, patients with amblyopia dypically have poor depth perception and poor vision in the lazy eye. Strabismus can be corrected by an ophthalmologist as late as the early twenties in some patients. The reason you probably don't notice when its wandering is because that eye is \"off\" as far as your brain is concerned.\n\nA drooping eyelid-which is different from strabismus, but can give the \"lazy eye\" appearance-can be a symptom of any number of things, from benign to extremely dangerous (e.g. stroke), but doesn't nessesarily have anything to do with acuity.\n"
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ni2ag | What is the earliest time that life theoretically could have arisen in the universe? | A question for reddit's resident astrophysicists that I've been curious about lately.
What is the first point in the universe's evolution that life could have theoretically started? Or, since how life got started seems to be a bit of a tricky question these days, how long would it take until the formation of earth-like planets that could theoretically support life?
As I understand it, it took a few hundred thousand years for the universe to cool to the point where hydrogen and helium could form, at which point these elements formed the first generation of stars. These stars then created the heavier elements, galaxies, etc.
How long would it take for the elements created in the death of this first generation (or whichever generation could create the heaviest elements) of stars to propagate out into the universe where they then become planets? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ni2ag/what_is_the_earliest_time_that_life_theoretically/ | {
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"This is a very difficult question to answer without a definition for life, due to the fact that life, by no means, has to be structured in any way remotely like it is seen on Earth. ",
"There's a 1999 paper by Martin Livio entitled \"How rare are extraterrestrial civilizations and when did they emerge?\" (published in The Astrophysical Journal) which discusses this topic. Although a great deal of the mathematics and statistics are beyond my undergraduate studies, the author concludes that it would take somewhere in the range of 10 Gyr after the birth of the universe for an intelligent civilization to emerge - this number would ostensibly be several billions of years lower for basic microbial life to form, as life appeared on Earth ~0.7 Gyr after our planet coalesced (life first appeared ~3.8 Gyr BP, with Earth cooling at 4.55 Gyr BP). It then took some 3 Gyr for life to progress from unicellular to multicellular forms. Thus, the universe was seeded with the heavy elements required for complex life to form only a few billion years ago, perhaps as long as 5 Gyr ago. Therefore, microbial life was likely possible some 8 Gyr ago at the earliest. Again, I'm sure a professional astrophysicist would have a more detailed answer, but hopefully this will get you started!",
"Interesting question. I did some estimates here:\n\nThe big bang produced only hydrogen and helium and almost no other elements. They were all formed in early stars. The star must explode to scatter these materials into space. Our sun is generation I star it was formed from generation II stars which were formed from generation III star which were the first stars in the universe (formed about 400 million years after big bang). \n\nThey were massive (20 to 150 Solar mases) and exploded as supernovae after 100 million years or so. Than it takes some time to form generation II stars and planetary systems. Let say it takes a billion years to form new stars and planets. \n\nHere comes the tricky part. Is it possible that planetary systems around generation II stars exist. There aren't many generation II stars in the galaxy nowadays and as I recall none with the planetary system has been observed yet. However it is very unlikely that planets wouldn't form around generation II stars. Gas giants have similar composition as stars, but the question remains for rocky planets. Apparently the rocky planets wouldn't be numerous due to low count of heavier elements, but the ingredients were there. \n\nSomeone mentioned that it took 700 milion years for primitive life to form on Earth, so if we sum these numbers it is: 400 my+100my+1000my+700my=2.2 Gy= 2.2 billion years. \n\nThe number for primitive life is probably much easier to estimate than the time scale to form intelligent life. I do not dare to interfere in this part, because I can't find good arguments to begin with.",
"I posted essentially the same question a while back: [\"About the Fermi Paradox\"](_URL_2_)\n\nThe answer was basically [this](_URL_0_)\n\nSome highlights:\n\nIf life starts as soon as it can, then [life in the universe has a 6 billion year head start on us.](_URL_1_) Our entire recorded history lasts around 10,000 years.\n\n* 6,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth-like planets could form in the universe\n* 4,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth formed\n* 2,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth-like life on some other earth-like planet might have reached modern human technology (Error on this could be huge)\n...\n* 50 years -- Human spaceflight\n* 10 years -- Persistent Occupation of Space (ISS)\n\nA Sol-like star has a life expectancy of 9-10 billion years. We're about half-way through the sun's lifetime. Any civilization lasting longer than 4 billion years (a hell of a run!) will have to be deeply spacefaring to survive.\n\nNote: This assumes the conditions for life are *earth-like* life under the same conditions we evolved under. We have no data about the development of life under any other conditions -- only speculation -- so that's the best anyone can come up with AFAIK. But assuming how early earth-like life could form is safe because it's the best life we could hope to make contact with -- it would probably be the most like us.",
"One thing that's missed in a lot of these speculative threads about the dawn of intelligent life: our chance evolution took place only because of a few very chaotic events: For instance if the Earth didn't have several massive die offs there wouldn't have been the chance for mammals to become the dominate life form on Earth. \n\nIntelligence isn't a definitive way for life to evolve. In fact it's quite the opposite. \"Dumb\" life has a better chance of surviving than \"intelligent\" life due to the time it takes for the brain to develop. \n\nIn the end we just might be the first intelligent life. Depressing as that is....",
"This is a very difficult question to answer without a definition for life, due to the fact that life, by no means, has to be structured in any way remotely like it is seen on Earth. ",
"There's a 1999 paper by Martin Livio entitled \"How rare are extraterrestrial civilizations and when did they emerge?\" (published in The Astrophysical Journal) which discusses this topic. Although a great deal of the mathematics and statistics are beyond my undergraduate studies, the author concludes that it would take somewhere in the range of 10 Gyr after the birth of the universe for an intelligent civilization to emerge - this number would ostensibly be several billions of years lower for basic microbial life to form, as life appeared on Earth ~0.7 Gyr after our planet coalesced (life first appeared ~3.8 Gyr BP, with Earth cooling at 4.55 Gyr BP). It then took some 3 Gyr for life to progress from unicellular to multicellular forms. Thus, the universe was seeded with the heavy elements required for complex life to form only a few billion years ago, perhaps as long as 5 Gyr ago. Therefore, microbial life was likely possible some 8 Gyr ago at the earliest. Again, I'm sure a professional astrophysicist would have a more detailed answer, but hopefully this will get you started!",
"Interesting question. I did some estimates here:\n\nThe big bang produced only hydrogen and helium and almost no other elements. They were all formed in early stars. The star must explode to scatter these materials into space. Our sun is generation I star it was formed from generation II stars which were formed from generation III star which were the first stars in the universe (formed about 400 million years after big bang). \n\nThey were massive (20 to 150 Solar mases) and exploded as supernovae after 100 million years or so. Than it takes some time to form generation II stars and planetary systems. Let say it takes a billion years to form new stars and planets. \n\nHere comes the tricky part. Is it possible that planetary systems around generation II stars exist. There aren't many generation II stars in the galaxy nowadays and as I recall none with the planetary system has been observed yet. However it is very unlikely that planets wouldn't form around generation II stars. Gas giants have similar composition as stars, but the question remains for rocky planets. Apparently the rocky planets wouldn't be numerous due to low count of heavier elements, but the ingredients were there. \n\nSomeone mentioned that it took 700 milion years for primitive life to form on Earth, so if we sum these numbers it is: 400 my+100my+1000my+700my=2.2 Gy= 2.2 billion years. \n\nThe number for primitive life is probably much easier to estimate than the time scale to form intelligent life. I do not dare to interfere in this part, because I can't find good arguments to begin with.",
"I posted essentially the same question a while back: [\"About the Fermi Paradox\"](_URL_2_)\n\nThe answer was basically [this](_URL_0_)\n\nSome highlights:\n\nIf life starts as soon as it can, then [life in the universe has a 6 billion year head start on us.](_URL_1_) Our entire recorded history lasts around 10,000 years.\n\n* 6,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth-like planets could form in the universe\n* 4,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth formed\n* 2,000,000,000 years ago -- Earth-like life on some other earth-like planet might have reached modern human technology (Error on this could be huge)\n...\n* 50 years -- Human spaceflight\n* 10 years -- Persistent Occupation of Space (ISS)\n\nA Sol-like star has a life expectancy of 9-10 billion years. We're about half-way through the sun's lifetime. Any civilization lasting longer than 4 billion years (a hell of a run!) will have to be deeply spacefaring to survive.\n\nNote: This assumes the conditions for life are *earth-like* life under the same conditions we evolved under. We have no data about the development of life under any other conditions -- only speculation -- so that's the best anyone can come up with AFAIK. But assuming how early earth-like life could form is safe because it's the best life we could hope to make contact with -- it would probably be the most like us.",
"One thing that's missed in a lot of these speculative threads about the dawn of intelligent life: our chance evolution took place only because of a few very chaotic events: For instance if the Earth didn't have several massive die offs there wouldn't have been the chance for mammals to become the dominate life form on Earth. \n\nIntelligence isn't a definitive way for life to evolve. In fact it's quite the opposite. \"Dumb\" life has a better chance of surviving than \"intelligent\" life due to the time it takes for the brain to develop. \n\nIn the end we just might be the first intelligent life. Depressing as that is...."
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1655fm | Are These Ancient Roman/Greek Coins? | My father was given four coins that appear to be ancient (possibly Roman) and I was wondering if someone could tell me more about these coins (when they were minted, any value, etc.). The 4th coin is the only one which I think might be from recent history (last 150 years) but the rest seem to be Ancient Greek or Roman. Here is the album with the photos of the coins:
_URL_0_
Thanks! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1655fm/are_these_ancient_romangreek_coins/ | {
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"1. I couldn't find the exact coin, but [here](_URL_0_) is a similar one, it appears that this one is Roman. \n\n3. This is a 17th century coin from Venice. [Here](_URL_1_) is a similar one on ebay. ",
"First coin is Roman, can't make out the consuls/emperor but the 'AVC' mark means that the coin has passed the mint twice, with the stamp indicating that while it's worn, it still had its original value. The second one is from emperor Gordian, ruler in March/April 238. Third one is from around 1700 Venetian, last one is 18th/19th century.\n\nEdit: seems like countermarks are not necessarily mint 'seals of approval', but were also applied before donations, such as those from the emperor to the legions. The AVC-mark seems to be indicative of the Pannonian legions, which fits with the general theme of the coin collection.\n\nSecond edit: it's actually more likely that the second coin is of boy-emperor Gordian III, Gordian I's grandson, due to the boyish look of the portrait and the shape of the nose; although a big nose was apparently a family trait of the Gordians, the younger's nose is slightly more rounded, while old Gordian's nose is more straight. He also has a chin, which the young boy is largely lacking."
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1iym7n | why is it feasible for scalpers to buy tickets and then resell them? couldn't the original ticket seller just sell the tickets at the price the scalpers sell them for? | I recently tried to get some advance sale tickets off Ticketmaster and they were gone within less than five minutes. This is, apparently, fairly typical and then the tickets show up on StubHub for a significant premium above face value. I find this puzzling. It seems that Ticketmaster could easily make more money by setting a higher price point in the first place. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iym7n/eli5_why_is_it_feasible_for_scalpers_to_buy/ | {
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"It's supply/demand. If the tickets are gone in 5 minutes, the price is now influenced by low supply and high demand. When demand is high and supply is low, price goes up. ",
"The original ticket seller (the venue) sometimes sets the price low to be nice, so \"regular\" folks have a chance to see the show. Or sometimes, they werent trying to be nice, but just underestimated demand.",
"NPR recently did a piece on this. Part of it is if the artist charges $200 then the artist is a money grubber. If a scalper does it, it is expected.\n\nHere is the piece.\n_URL_0_\n",
"Often - the artists themselves (through management) will have \"rights\" to the tickets being sold. Sadly most of the tickets are sold to the scalpers and the stub hubs almost directly prior to the box office opening.\nThe artists themselves are then guaranteed that the bums will be in the seats. \nThis is the reason why shows are sold out so fast and fans are forced to shell out big bucks for tickets. \n",
"Think of it as buying \"risk\" when a scalper buys tickets to resell. \n\nThe risk is that the value of the ticket will decrease or a final buyer will not be found. The original buyer is guaranteed a return on the ticket at the cost of a potential increase in value of the ticket. \n\nThere are some other bits about expectations and price stickiness (I bought a $50 ticket last week, the seat next to it is now $25... most people would not be happy).\n\nThe San Francisco Giants have setup \"dynamic pricing\" for tickets that fluctuate with current demand.\n\nAn interesting on the ground conversation with scalpers: [econtalk](_URL_1_)\nA bit more of a technical article:\n[An Economic Guide to Ticket Pricing in the Entertainment Industry](_URL_0_)",
"The inefficiency in the ticket market used to be that Ticketmaster would sell every ticket to the concert for the same price, even though the public doesn't value every ticket equally. That's the way brokers made money. Ticketmaster used to sell the front row at the same price as the last row, even though those seats have vastly different values to the public.\n\nFrom an economic standpoint, every seat has a different value to the public. ~~That's \"price discrimination\"~~. So the way the artist should maximize their profit is to charge a different price for every seat. For each seat, they should charge the maximum price the public is willing to pay. If artists and Ticketmaster started doing this, there would be no more ticket brokers, because the artist and Ticketmaster would have gotten 100% of the profit with nothing left over.\n\nBut this is impractical to implement. In the last decade or two, they have started charging more for the floor. And lower deck is more than upper deck, and sidelines are more than endzones. And artists now sometimes sell the first ten rows at much higher prices. The more individualized the price can be per seat, the less potential ticket brokers have to make a profit. Their profit came from inefficiencies in the market that are slowly disappearing.\n\n",
"| Couldn't the original ticket seller just sell the tickets at the price the scalpers sell them for?\n\nOf course they could, but who wants to spend every Friday and Saturday night standing out in front of a stadium?",
"What I don't understand is how scalpers in front of the stadium are considered \"illegal\" but companies like ticketmaster and stubhub, which are businesses built on scalping, are legal. Does anyone know why?",
"It is worth noting (depending on who you believe) that the Rolling Stones actually tried doing this for their current 50 and Counting tour. They set floor/premium seats at $600 knowing full well that there would be a lot of that inventory left. Then on the day of the show they offered all their unsold inventory for $85 per ticket - buyers were only allowed to get a max of two tickets - they had to show up to the arena with their confirmation number, a photo ID, and their guest in tow - then they were given tickets on the spot and could not exit the arena. This essentially ensured that the ticket(s) could not be resold.\n\nThe Stones picked up a lot of flak for this...some people were mortified by the sticker price of the tickets, skeptics said the Stones were simply not a good enough draw and they had to offer their tickets in a fire sale. Either way, the Stones came out of this tour looking \"damaged.\" When you consider they are rock royalty, this probably doesn't matter, but now you can imagine what Bruno Mars or Maroon 5 would look like if they attempted the same strategy and charged $400-500 for floor seats to box out the brokers.",
"Most countries have laws against it. In the USA you can thank capitalism pushed too far. ",
"Saw an interesting idea by an artist and I can't remember who it was. Basically to combat scalpers they just kept holding concerts at the same venue every day until tickets didn't sell out. Then everyone who wanted to see them could and nobody could scalp tickets because the supply was so high. They ended up playing 4 or 5 shows in the same city and all sold out but the last one. Would be tough to do in general because most big venues book up quite a bit in advance but was interesting."
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2cxd2q | why can people who trespass on your property sue you if they're being a bone head and get hurt? (more info in post) | I live in the city. We've had people trespassing on our roof lately (walking from roof to roof over multiple buildings). We have multiple signs saying, "keep off the roof", "do not trespass", etc. We have cameras, motion sensored lights, signs, but we still get these kids drinking beers walking across all the roofs. They stop to hang out and have a beer on all the various roof decks. I'm told by neighbors, if they fall off the roof, we would get sued. How/why is that allowed? We're doing the best we can with signs, security etc, but Unless we post a person up there 24 / 7 we have no control over what these kids are doing. Can someone explain why the law allows this? What else does the law expect us to do to "protect" these trespassers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cxd2q/eli5_why_can_people_who_trespass_on_your_property/ | {
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"Do you live in USA? There are no restrictions on what a person can or cannot be sued for in your country. Whether or not it would be entertained by the courts is another matter, and probably depends greatly on the *general* condition of your roof, or more specifically the argument presented by the \"victim\". Having said that, even defending yourself from a bogus lawsuit can be costly if it is eventually thrown out of court.",
"You can sue any one at any time for any reason for any amount of money in the US. Doesn't mean you'll win your case. If you've taken the proper steps to keep the kids off the roof, and they go up anyway and hurt themselves, their case will probably get thrown out of court. ",
"Anyone can sue anyone for any reason at all. The real question is, can they win. In a case like this, there is zero chance of them winning. HOWEVER, fighting it is going to take time and money from your building. \n\nIn many cases it's easier to simply settle, and that's why these people sue in the first place. They know it's not worth the fight for larger companies and they will just pay a small amount rather than deal with the hassle. But what's a small amount to a company might not be a small amount to a stupid drunk teenager. To that stupid teenager it might be quite a lot of money. "
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9ymwy8 | why are todays movies still filmed with film-rolls? | Isnt this "old fashioned", whats the deal?
ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ymwy8/eli5_why_are_todays_movies_still_filmed_with/ | {
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"Resolution is infinitely better on film than digital, easier to scan to whatever resolution they want to produce the movie at. ",
"Some are, some aren't. It depends on a whole bunch of factors.\n\n[Wikipedia](_URL_0_) is your friend.",
"The majority of films are shot digitally. The main reason is convenience/cost. It is far cheaper and easier to continually swap out hard drives throughout the day than replacing film reels.\n\nThe resolution difference is partly true, due to the fact that film can be \"scanned\" at any resolution, but higher resolutions reach diminishing returns around 4K. \n\nThe main reason for directors preferring the look of film, is for the more natural, organic aesthetic that film produces compared to the more mathematical grain(noise) and even image of digital. \n\nThe truth is however, with today's colour and DI technology, anything shot on digital can more or less be processed to look almost indistinguishable to film."
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xxkzm | When is a number near infinity? | When getting very large numbers from the [Google calculator](_URL_0_) it just says infinity, instead of giving the actual number e.g. if you put 4^16,000,000 (the number of possible combinations of bases there are in the human genome) it doesn't give a number, just "infinity".
When is a number considered infinite in maths, statistics and by Google?
Obviously, infinity is impossibly large, but is there a measure of how infinite numbers can be? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xxkzm/when_is_a_number_near_infinity/ | {
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"The calculator is simply wrong. Any number to the power of any other is not infinity, it's well defined. I don't know why they've chosen to have it work this way, but don't think there's anything to learn other than 'google calculator gives the wrong answer sometimes'.\n\nIn fact, infinity is *not* a number, and it doesn't even really make sense to say a number is 'close to' infinity. You can compare numbers to one another, but the statement 'x > y' is mathematically meaningful so even if infinity were a number there'd be really no point in instead saying 'x is nearer infinity than y'.\n\nEdit: To be clear, what's actually probably happening is infinity is the placeholder answer for when the output number in the calculation exceeds some boundary. When the answer is detected to not fit in its allocated bounds, infinity is returned instead, regardless of the fact that it's wrong.",
" > When is a number near infinity?\n\nInfinity in the normal sense isn't a number, it a concept, so it's hard to even find a meaningful answer to your question - but if you had to, you could say 1 is as far away from infinity as 4^16,000,000\n\n > is there a measure of how infinite numbers can be?\n\nThere are fields of math structured around doing calculations on infinity. Like the ordinal infinities, where you can have infinities of different sizes (with real-world significance) and you can add/multiple/etc. infinities for proofs and such. If you had any additional questions about that, I might be able to answer them.",
"Everyone else is giving you the mathematical answer, this is the programming answer.\n\nComputers normally handle non-integer (fractions, decimals, and some others) numbers using the IEEE floating point standard. This is an engineering type approach to numbers that represents them as a number between 1 and 10 and an order of magnitude so it looks like:\n\n2.71345 times 10^1\n\nwhere 10^1 is the order of magnitude that says the number is between 10^1 or 10 and 10^2 or 100 . So this number is 27.1345 \n\nThese number are stored in a computer using a fixed number of bits or digits. This means that the first number has a limited range of accuracy, while the second number has a limited magnitude, and can only be so big. \n\nOn a normal computer,\nthe maximum value for a float is: 3.40282 times 10^38\nwhile the maximum value for a double(or big floats) is: 1.79769 times 10^308.\n\nAny number that is bigger than this will just be treated as infinity.",
"Are there really different sized infinities? Is the set of even numbers (infinite) really smaller than the set of all integers? "
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4r8vdm | Of the non-radioactive elements, which is the most useless (i.e., has the FEWEST applications in industry / functions in nature)? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4r8vdm/of_the_nonradioactive_elements_which_is_the_most/ | {
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"There was an NPR show a while ago where some scientist named Thulium, one of the rare earth elements, as the most useless.\n\nLutetium is probably the runner up - another rare earth that's extremely scarce, difficult to extract, and expensive.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBoth of these are 'useless' owing to their scarcity which means they cost a lot which means applications are few. ",
"I might go with Scandium. It's not rare, and it has some application in aluminum alloys. Crazy rare elements are too unknown to know their usefulness. \n\nNoble gasses, and halides are all useful.\nGroup one and two are pretty useful.\nAny metaloid is useful.\nNon metals all have lots of uses.\n\n",
"Gallium is useless in nature, with zero biological functions to its name. Yet it enables a host of industry applications.\n\nSulfur on the other hand is very useful for a variety of biological processes. At the same time, it's so worthless to industry that they are literally making a giant pyramid out of the stuff in Canada as a byproduct of oil extraction with zero intended use.\n\n***PLEASE NOTE***:Not saying that there are no uses for sulfur, just that the supply ridiculously exceeds demand to the point that they're just playing pharaoh up in Alberta. \n\nI think you'll be hard pressed to find an element that is universally useless.\n\nEdit: added emphasis to my statement that sulfur has uses but is cheaper than dirt, as nit-pickers want to argue the semantics of the thing.\n\nEdit 2: Since I didn't address the question appropriately with regard to usefulness instead looking at value, I'll change my industry answer to strontium since we're no longer using CRTVs and HFCS and newer extraction methods have both done their part to make Strontian sugar beet extraction a thing of the past. Strontium has its uses as well, but is pretty insignificant as far as volume of mining per year goes.\n\nEdit 3: Scandium and Tellurium were both low hanging fruit, as they're particularly rare and aren't involved in biological processes for the most part, but as rare as they are, it didn't seem reasonable to include them while ignoring Astantine just because it was radioactive. ",
"Scandium is relatively abundant, but has only two industrial applications: aluminum doping (where it is outperformed by less expensive titanium) and making very white light. And apparently it's also mildly toxic.",
"[Thulium](_URL_0_) has a reputation for uselessness and obscurity, and the classification extends to most of its neighbors in the rare earth metals. A few of the rare earths, such as neodymium, have common uses, however, the majority are too chemically similar and esoteric to warrant any real application. ",
"I'll throw in a bid for Rubidium. It's way more expensive and rare than potassium, but it's more expensive than cesium, but doesn't do anything that cesium doesn't. It'd be nice if you hit a deposit of the stuff, but there's rarely a reason to buy it over the other options available (cesium or potassium).",
"I can't remember if its radioactive or not (I pretty sure its not, or the isotope is so stable to be effectively nonradioactive), but bismuth has very few commercial applications. It's used in Pepto-Bismol, some cosmetics and pigments, and a few alloys (usually alloys where a low melting temp is needed, like a sprinkler head). There is some interesting research indicating that electrodes made of bismuth vanadate can be used in water-splitting photovoltaic cells for more efficient hydrogen production. This is mostly due to their low cost and resistance to corrosion.",
"Caesium is pretty useless. While Caesium Formate is used in drilling fluids for oil wells, that's about the only application of non-radioactive Caesium, apart from atomic clocks (which will use a relatively tiny amount of Caesium). In addition to its limited uses, it melts at 28.5 Celsius, and since it is very low down in the alkali metal if it touches even a small amount of water it will basically explode.",
"Cadmium is becoming less and less useful as other elements have taken over its market without the envinromental issues, few niche areas but used more in india and china where they care less about the risk side of it.",
"Can't source it as it was in person, but I went and saw Randall Munroe when he was touring his new book - there was a part with all the elements where he explained them in very simple words. \n\nHe mentioned to us that he had a big problem with Scandium - he pretty much couldn't find anything to describe it's practical uses. He eventually settled on 'Element that doesn't do much'."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thulium",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetium"
],
[],
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thulium"
],
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6iqlrb | why is it that people are much more likely to be allergic to fish or shellfish than red meat or chicken? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iqlrb/eli5_why_is_it_that_people_are_much_more_likely/ | {
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"because we're made of very similar meat. it's rather difficult for something to be allergic to itself and not dead.\n\nsea creatures are different enough to humans that they contain many proteins we, and land animals in general, simply don't have. ",
"Allergies are not fully understood but there are a few interesting studies looking into their causes. I've linked one below and the basic premise is that exposure to many plethora of microbes has taught our bodies to not feel threatened by certain exposures in our environment. Whereas lack of exposure to many microbes has resulted in more allergies. This is believed to be one of the reasons for the rise in allergies and asthma in our society today (but is still being investigated). \n\nNow because allergies are not fully understood this is just my interpretation and I hope it makes sense. It is possible is that for most of our history we have had constant contact with cows, chicken, pigs, etc. (through agriculture) that has resulted in an exchange of microbes and this has been passed down in our genes. This constant exchange has made our bodies much more used to what these animals bring, and our bodies do not sense it as a threat. \n\nFish and shellfish are in the water and there is almost no exchange of microbes between our two species. The only real exposure our bodies have to them has been through what was caught fishing. Compared to agricultural societies living with or close to the animals in their homes, the amount of exchange was minimal. \n\nAnother possibility is the fact that other mammals are closer to our species than shellfish and our bodies sense less of a threat. But again, we simply are not 100% sure. \n\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
[
"https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/12/why-amish-could-hold-key-curing-asthma-and-allergies/88629400/"
]
] | ||
25o2gq | How can a bird clearly say "polly want a cracker" without human lips, teeth, tongue or vocal folds? | As a singer myself, I know how important our lips, teeth, tongue and vocal folds are to our ability to articulate words. Birds can't have anywhere near the kind of agility with their tongues. They don't have lips, teeth or a sizable vocalis. So how can they sound so human? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/25o2gq/how_can_a_bird_clearly_say_polly_want_a_cracker/ | {
"a_id": [
"chj7pbh"
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"text": [
"Humans use their mouth (teeth, lips, tongue) and larynx (vocal cords) for speech.\nBirds have a larynx, but it doesn't have sound producing structures (as ours do) and don't use their tongue. A bird's vocal apparatus is the syrinx an upside-down y-shaped structure located at the bottom of the trachea (where the windpipe meets the lungs). Each branch of the syrinx has an independently moving valve. This allows birds (primarily songbirds: Passeriformes) to produce complex series of sounds (such as human speech)."
]
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[]
] | |
3ppk5u | when filling up a car for gas, what stops the pump to prevent gas overflowing? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ppk5u/eli5_when_filling_up_a_car_for_gas_what_stops_the/ | {
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"In the gas pistol, there is a vapor recovery system that siphons off the vapors coming from the fuel. When the gas tank is reaching its capacity, the vapors caught in the top of the tank are expelled by the rising fuel level in the tank, and the pump detects this rise in flow rate. This signals the pump to shut off to prevent overfilling.\n\n\"clicking\" the gas pistol after the overflow system kicks in is not recommended, because topping off the gas tank in that manner can cause spilling, leaves no room for the fuel to expand due to temperature change, and may also leave you feeding fuel back into the pump through the vapor reclamation system - meaning you are paying for gas that goes back into the gas stations' tanks."
]
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[]
] | |
1pcrfm | When did merchant ships cease being armed? | I've been re-reading Patrick O'Brien lately and notice references to armed merchantmen. Yet, when I look at the ravages of the Confederate raiders Alabama and Shenandoah 40 years later, I don't see those armed merchantmen. When did arming merchantmen go out of style? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pcrfm/when_did_merchant_ships_cease_being_armed/ | {
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"Arming merchantmen has always been about balancing risk and reward- it's just not economical to arm every merchantman, so only a portion ever are. It's generally not cost-effective.\n\nI'm not sure about the status of civil war era merchants, but I know that merchant fleets during the world wars made extensive use of \"Q-ships\" (armed merchantmen disguised as unarmed ships) and various combinations of arms on merchant vessels, from simple guns like the anti-aircraft batteries on a Liberty ship to catapult-launched expendable fighters carried by some British ships on the arctic route to Russia.\n\nIn both wars, these measures were largely ineffective on their own, whether against submarines, surface raiders, or enemy aircraft. Although there were some successes, even armed merchantmen required significant contingents of military escorts, and so most went unarmed or very lightly armed.\n\nThe practice fully never ended, though- some ships traversing the pirate-ridden Gulf of Aden carry mercenary gunmen, or on-board weapons, including more esoteric devices like sound cannons and water cannons to deter boarders non-fatally. Once again, though, there are a number of economic factors which make self-defense unfashionable.\n\nIn the modern period, the added safety provided by on-board defenses has to be balanced against the possibility of increased costs. The biggest factor is insurance policies-- supertankers and container ships have policies worth many millions of dollars, and their premiums can be raised if the insurer thinks there's a possibility of running gun battles near covered property.\n\nThen there's the fact that the price of a team of mercenaries over the course of a month's long voyage is a considerable expense when you consider how small the crews of the really enormous ships often are. Why spend a quarter of your payroll for a team which might never fire its weapons, and which makes the whole boat more expensive just by being on it?\n\nA third major consideration is the threat of escalation. Currently the policy on many or most large ships is that in the event of a pirate raid, the crew is to lock itself into an impenetrable safe room which contains provisions and accommodations sufficient to wait out the hostage negotiations. The pirates themselves are then paid off- it's cheaper than anything else for the reasons outlined above. But if the crews start shooting back, the pirates will most likely increase their use of force, which is a road nobody really wants to go down.\n\nSo to answer your question, we never really stopped arming merchantmen in one form or another, from a few \"psychological\" cannons to on-board aircraft. But even in O'Brien's day and onward, it has rarely been worth the trouble.\n\n\n(Sources: The Pirates of Somalia by Jay Bahadur, 2011; Silent Victory by Clay Blair Jr., 1975)",
"You can blame the Dutch for that. \n\nThey designed a type of ship known as the [Flyut](_URL_0_) that while only lightly armed was extremely efficient. It was sufficiently cheaper to run than a heavily armed merchant that those ships fell by the wayside. Obviously some merchant men continued to be armed after its introduction but they became more the realm of privateers. They were also far more common in wartime. \n\nO'Brian was writing about the Napoleonic wars. Both the French and the English employed vast privateer fleets during that conflict making armed merchants far more common. \n\nDuring the ACW the British enjoyed naval hegemony. Napoleon the 3rd while not exactly friends with the British did not strongly contest their control of the worlds oceans. With the Dutch and the Spanish out of the picture and England and France at peace there was little reason to operate armed merchant ships. Cannons were expensive and required a large crew to operate. \n\nConsider also that the US merchant fleet before the ACW was quite large and while successful, the number of Confederate raiders relatively low. The odds of running into one, even in the middle of the war, were not high. Even if you could get the guns, which were in high demand for Lincoln's navy, men to fire them might not be available. Lastly the *Shenandoah* specifically made a point of attacking whalers. A whaler was designed to maximize cargo capacity and endurance. Such vessels could not afford a gun deck. "
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluyt"
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8htmry | How does the specific heat capacity effect the performance of heatsinks? | So the specific heat capacity is the amount of heat energy required to heat up a substance per unit of mass. I get that. But how does it relate to heat sinks? is it that the lower the specific heat capacity, the better it is cuz it takes less energy to heat it up therefore it's easier to transfer the heat away? Please help! Thanks! | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8htmry/how_does_the_specific_heat_capacity_effect_the/ | {
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"text": [
"\"Heat up\" is very vague. Specific heat capacity is the amount of heat (in joules) needed to increase the temperature (in Kelvin) of 1 kg of substance by 1 K (or 1°C).\n\nSo, heat sinks should have high specific heat capacity so they can \"absorb\" more heat for each increase in temperature, since the heat transfer needs a temperature gradient.\n\nSorry if not clear "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
f5pann | can someone explain the significance of typing with a mix of upper and lower case letters -like this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5pann/eli5_can_someone_explain_the_significance_of/ | {
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"It's a mockery of the original phrase or words to invoke a tone of dumbassery. Or in simpler terms, it's that kid that copied whatever you said back to you, except he said it in a really annoying way, except upgraded.",
"Sarcasm,mostly. It’s inferred /s. A lot of people want their voice heard so they express themselves quite strongly.",
"Nowadays, it's a way of trying to convey the extralinguistic features, like intonation or sarcasm, when not actually speaking, but for instance, typing a comment online.\n\nBut also, in my first language (Polish) back in the mid and late nineties, this way of typing, together with using anglicised spelling and (later) a shitload of emoticons, was characteristic of silly teens and tweens who wanted to seem cool while using irc or other chat engines.\n\nETA: curiously enough, young people who used that kind of language over chat, were called \"pokemons\" :P",
"This is better in r/outoftheloop."
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[],
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95681g | what is the purpose of panicking? | Most "how to get out of extreme situations" guides say not to panic.
"Remain calm", etc.
So why do humans (and other animals) panic? Does it ever do any good, or is it just the byproduct of a scared brain with no real purpose to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95681g/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_panicking/ | {
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"In a panic you are going to run or fight. Being in a panic will increase the response and make your fight or run more effective. That increase in response is known as adrenalin which a chemical in your brain. ",
"It's been pretty beneficial to our survival up until we started contending with our own technology; running away from danger is frequently a good strategy in the wild.\n\nPanicking is the \"flight\" version of \"fight or flight\" and like any other adrenaline response it is there to help you ever overpower or outrun whatever threat you're facing; in nature there were more threats that needed running from or overpowering than ones that required calm rational thinking (something that gets thrown out in an adrenaline response), but now that we're dealing with less natural danger and more man-made danger, the opposite is true. \n\nYou're not going to overpower, for instance, the door in your car being held shut by water pressure if it gets driven into a lake, no matter how much absurd strength you get from being panicked. You're also not going to overpower a machine that has your finger stuck inside the gears, and by trying to pull away from it like your panic instinctively makes you, you may make the damage far worse.",
"For most animals, getting out of problems is mostly a physical challenge. We retain a system geared to that. Even tough we have specialized in THINKING our way out of problems. \n\nUnfortunately, we don't have the metabolic horsepower to use out body AND our brain. Depending on the situation, either may be the only way to survive.\n\nSo, the old system can still kick in when you are stressed. There are times when that system lets you lift a fallen tree now (what is the purpose of all those push ups Bruce) or otherwise run away from the bear. Which is why martial artists work so hard to get their attacks and counters to be reflex, the fight is faster than thought can cope with.\n\nOther times, NOT thinking is deadly. Jet is on fire, I'll jump out, oh wait, no parachute. \n\n"
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1n60vh | We learned Europeans brought diseases to and killed indigenous populations typically because their immune systems had never been exposed to such diseases. With globalization becoming more of a reality, why do we not see more diseases prone in one country negatively affecting those in another? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1n60vh/we_learned_europeans_brought_diseases_to_and/ | {
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"I don't think it's a matter of their immune systems being somehow innately different, but rather just that nobody in their villages had ever been sick with those diseases before. In Europe, the diseases have been around so long that there are already a significant number of people in the population who've already had it, so they are already immune. So if a European gets sick with a common disease, chances are pretty good that it will only spread to a few people who hadn't already caught it. Since none of the native Americans had ever been exposed before though, *everybody* got sick all at once, a lot of people died, and it probably also made them easy pickings.\n\nEdit: As for why this doesn't seem to be a problem in our modern era, it's exactly because of globalization that we really don't see this any more. There just aren't that many diseases out there we've never seen any more. We also have vaccinations and modern medicine to help make it easier for our immune systems to successfully fight off infection, but evolution is now the bigger problem in that modern diseases are evolving to become more resistant to the antibiotics and antibodies we've been over-using for years.",
"We do, we just don't tend to think about it that way. For example, when people in the US don't vaccinate their kids against measles, and then the kids travel to another country and pick up measles and bring it back to the US — getting dozens of people ill — that's exactly what happens. \n\nBut today, different populations of people mix much more than they used to before easy worldwide travel — so many diseases are widespread rather than being endemic, and vaccinations against many common infectious diseases are common, so populations of developed countries are often reasonably protected against most common diseases. Between those two things, it is harder to find people who are completely unexposed to a disease.",
"\"Emerging infectious diseases\" are a big health concern. \n\n\n_URL_1_ \n\n_URL_2_ \n\n_URL_0_ "
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"http://www.who.int/topics/emerging_diseases/en/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_infectious_disease",
"http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/eid/"
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16fgh8 | When training a drug-sniffing dog, does the amount of the training substance matter? | Some Virginia lawmakers suggest that if you want dogs to make large drug busts, they need to be trained with large amounts of drugs. Currently, they train with small amounts, as the larger amounts are destroyed by law.
_URL_0_ | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/16fgh8/when_training_a_drugsniffing_dog_does_the_amount/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"This does not make sense. Why would a dog that can find minute amount of drugs would not be able to find big amount? It is like your dog ignoring a bowl of bacon because it is used only to smelling bacon bits."
]
} | [] | [
"http://hamptonroads.com/2013/01/bill-would-let-drugsniffing-dogs-train-real-thing"
] | [
[]
] | |
2timqu | being attracted to someone's scent | hey i've read a couple of articles about this but they all have medical and very complicated explanations that are hard to understand. so, if someone wouldn't mind explaining it i would be very grateful ^^ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2timqu/eli5being_attracted_to_someones_scent/ | {
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"The process itself is extraordinarily complicated, but the idea behind it is simple enough to understand. \n\nEveryone's body secretes chemicals that are designed to attract a potential mate through smell. And, much like fingerprints, everyone's smell is just a tiny bit different so some people will smell good to you, and you will be attracted to them. It's basically the same way that food that smells good makes you desire to eat it, but it's a little more subtle than that because it primarily happens in your subconscious. That's really all there is to it.",
"In addition to what asdjfweaiv said, there are some other things that are important about it. Everyone's body is good at fighting off certain sicknesses, but which sickness those are vary from person to person. Often times, our body can pick up on when someone has immunities that compliment yours (meaning, in this case) that they're different than yours. That's important because it means that if you had babies with that person, the baby would be more likely to be immune to a greater number of illnesses than if you had babies with someone with the same immunities as yours."
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2x3x36 | why does medical research need so much of donated money when pharmaceutical companies are super rich and can afford to do the research themselves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x3x36/eli5why_does_medical_research_need_so_much_of/ | {
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"Pharmaceutical companies make drugs. They do not invent new surgical techniques, new equipment or new courses of treatment.\n\nEven in situations where the solution turns out to be different drugs, the reason pharmaceutical companies are super-rich in the first place is that they spend their money on those avenues best suited for a high return.\n\nErectile dysfunction drugs are high return. Curing obscure forms of cancer is not.",
"Because \"big pharma\" isn't one monolithic block, and even if it were, priorities are a thing. Companies exist to make money, so they're going to go for the easiest, biggest payback they can find. \n\nMedical research looking for donations is investigating things that don't fall in that \"easy and will make us rich\" bracket.",
"Because academic and industrial research are looking at very different things. A lot of academic research (like what I used to do) is \"basic science.\" It's focused on figuring out how life works and what is going wrong in diseases. It's absolutely critical to modern drug development, but in and of itself, unlikely to generate new treatments or valuable patents. Thus, academic research needs to seek funding from the government or private donors, in exchange for doing research for the benefit of humanity. \n\n Industry research is focused more on \"translational science.\" Industry takes the basic science done by academia and translates it into treatments. This process, including FDA trials, can be enormously expensive, and is not something academia can (or wants) to do. In exchange for taking these risks, industry can make substantial amounts of money. "
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76cpga | why does the protein in eggs denature faster/with less heat than other proteins like meat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76cpga/eli5_why_does_the_protein_in_eggs_denature/ | {
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"I'm not a chemist, but i would argue that it has to do with two things:\nThe makeup of egg white vs. Muscle tissue (which is the part of the animal mostly eaten) and the nature of the proteins within the egg vs those within the muscles.\n\nWhen you boil an egg, you boil a wholly different substance than when frying/cooking meat. That has to do with it's purpose. While an egg is essentially an ~~egg cell(yolk) with it's supply tissue (egg white)~~ egg cell with its primary supply (yolk) and it's protective and secondary supply (egg white). The egg white contains a lot of water that evaporates easily when boiled, and 10% of it's mass are actual proteins (less than in the yolk, which has 16% proteins). Also, because of all the water, the egg is less dense, allowing for faster heating and subsequently a quick denaturation of the proteins.\n\nA muscle contains a lot more protein, just because the cells themselves are much more complex and have many different enzymes, transporters and other proteins to guarantee that a muscle can function in a body. Up to 80 % of muscle mass can be protein. So that accounts for a longer denaturation time - there simply is more protein in a muscle.\n\nThen there might be some proteins within the muscle that may be more heat resistant than those in eggs, thus taking a higher temperature to unfold. But i can only speculate on that.. "
]
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[]
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2d8mjy | What is the simplest organism known to develop cancer? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2d8mjy/what_is_the_simplest_organism_known_to_develop/ | {
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"Any organism that goes through cell division and proliferation can develop cancer, but identifying these tumors can be difficult on such small and simple organisms. [Here](_URL_0_) is an image of tumor growth of a fly I found on the internet. I also read a paper earlier linking sponges to cancer. \"As part of the new analysis, the team looked in the sponge genome for more than 100 genes that have been implicated in human cancers and found about 90 percent of them. Future research will show what roles these genes play in endowing sponge cells with team spirit.\" \nAlthough my answer didn't answer your question fully, it's really hard to answer because scientists aren't going around looking for cancers in simple organisms "
]
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[
"http://imgur.com/WNgfIzQ"
]
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ddwdm0 | What are the origins of the "fabulous" gay stereotype? | I was playing Dragon Quest XI which got me thinking. What is the origin of the words "fabulous", "darling", and the like being seen as stereotypically gay? Was there some individual who acted like this and that bled into pop culture? Anybody have an idea? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ddwdm0/what_are_the_origins_of_the_fabulous_gay/ | {
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"I'm not sure I feel comfortable saying that this is the *origin* of the stereotype, but it certainly pushes the idea back farther than I usually see it.\n\nIn the eighteenth century, there was a \"type\" known as the macaroni. To quote from a [previous answer of mine on them](_URL_1_):\n\n > In the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, it was fairly common for wealthy young British gentlemen to take a tour of \"the Continent\", meaning Europe - specifically or especially France and Italy (sometimes also Switzerland and Germany). While interest in beautiful or interesting scenery was becoming more important to refinement in the second half of this period, these gentlemen largely intended to visit the great cities of these countries to take in their arts and culture, learn about what made them important, and acquire polish. [...] The proper early modern British gentleman was supposed to be conversant with the important European cultures (while not preferring them to his own, of course), and to know who was who and what was what in them. He would visit the same cities as other young British men, typically forming the same opinions or parroting the ones that were already displayed in conventional travelogues of the day, allowing him to be a part of refined British male culture on his return.\n > \n > Macaroni pasta was already in existence at this time, although it was not typically eaten in Britain. So when the \"Macaroni Club\" formed out of young men who had seriously enjoyed their Grand Tours and intended to continue their preference for Italian styles at home, the name was significant in that it signaled how exotic the club members' tastes were as well as automatically shutting out those who had not been on the Tour or who had not gone as far as Italy and would not have any clue what the word meant. (It's also the case that the Tour was meant to make men aware of what was happening elsewhere in the world, but not to make them prefer France, Italy, etc. to their native Britain, which was obviously the best country in the world.) The earliest reference we have to it is a letter by Horace Walpole in 1764, where he says that it is \"composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses\". The epithet then was transferred to the young men themselves in a derogatory fashion.\n\nIt didn't take very long for the concept of the macaroni to spread beyond the confines of the club itself and become applied to any men who wore any of the following: tight-fitting clothes based on European court dress, particularly with tight sleeves and a short coat; bright or light colored fabrics, also fabrics patterned with stripes; hair powder and cosmetics; [heavily-powdered hair styled with a bump on top](_URL_0_) and often with the queue in a black silk bag; and overlarge shoe buckles on delicate, small shoes. This is in contrast with [the more sedate style favored by most British men](_URL_2_), with darker colors, a looser fit, and a restrained hairstyle. There were also feminized, Francized speech affectations associated with the macaronis - a polemic pamphlet of 1747 gave the examples \"*Oh! Pard'n me, mi Dear! I ke'n't possibly be of that Apinion,*\" and \"*O! fie! Ye filt-hy Creter!*\" While French men were depicted in English pop culture as skinny, weak, fashionable, and vain, the national stereotype of British manhood was \"John Bull\", a hearty country squire with no interest in fashion and an appetite for domestic roast beef, who didn't approve of young men putting so much effort into their appearance.\n\nThe stereotypical macaroni was often considered a gender between men and women, \"neuter\" or \"amphibious\". Remember that at this time, sex and gender and even sexual role were inextricably linked: men were active, virile, and hearty while women were passive, soft, and delicate. The macaroni spoke in an affected style, walked and moved with studied grace, liked \"feminine\" fabrics and accessories, and had an unmanly interest in fashion on the whole, which made them appear to be something between men and women. Fanny Burney wrote in *Evelina* (1778), \"At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what most diverted me was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman's dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbands with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.\" Their supposed effeminacy made them assumed to be uninterested in and unattractive to women, which could mean that they had no sex drive, but seemed to very frequently mean that they were interested in men. Popular satirical prints showed them outright dancing with other men, or included more veiled references to their sexual preferences, like a cat's head carved into a chair to reference the word \"catamite\". Interestingly, while we'd expect this to throw men into a crisis, it seems that women were perceived to have more of a problem with being \"replaced\" than men were at the prospect of being found attractive by other men. \n\nNot all men called macaronis were ever apparently thought to be homosexual, like Charles James Fox (future Prime Minister) and there were homosexual men who did not take part in the macaroni subculture, like Horace Walpole himself, who had still been noted as physically \"queer\" during his day for a delicate, affected walk. (Evidence that the link between stereotypically affected physical behavior and homosexuality existed before this period to some extent.) But the macaroni phenomenon of the mid-to-late eighteenth century represents a highly public understanding of the tropes that still often exist.\n\nMy major source here is *Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World* (2018) by Peter McNeil. You might be interested in it!"
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1agz7g | why is it so socially acceptable to drive 5-10 mph over the speed limit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1agz7g/why_is_it_so_socially_acceptable_to_drive_510_mph/ | {
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"We like to get to places more quickly, 5-10 mph doesn't seem like a huge difference while you're driving, and the law is rarely enforced when it comes to driving a little bit over.",
"In my experience:\n\nOn non-urban main roads in the UK the limit is usually 60-70mph (30-40mph in urban areas, sometimes lower).\nIf you exceed the limit in an urban area and are caught you will be heavily prosecuted - *\"What if you'd run over little Timmy?\"*\n\n\nI've only seen it to be \"socially acceptable\" to exceed the speed limit on motorways (highways), especially when there is more traffic and lots of people are doing it.\n\nReasons I've heard are:\n\n\"The limit is too low nowadays\"\n\n\"I had to go faster, the guy behind me was already doing 75+\"\n\n\"Everyone else was doing it\"\n\n\"I was in a hurry\".\n\nFrom an enforcement POV if there are many motorists doing it at the same time you can't really penalise them (manpower issues) without extensive automated surveillance, like speed traps or average-speed zones.\n\nPlus, so long as everyone is moving at roughly the same speed there is less danger than from \"reckless speeding\" - where one person is going much faster than everyone else.",
"Why shouldn't it be? Speed limits are an inherently crude and not particularly effective solution to a complex problem: how to encourage people to drive *safely*. I see two main problems with speed law:\n\n1) If there were a maximum \"safe\" speed at which to drive down a certain road, it wouldn't be a constant--it would vary wildly depending on road conditions, visibility, traffic volume, etc. Driving over the limit on one day can easily be safer than driving under the limit the next day if conditions were better on the first day.\n\n2) Although speed is a major factor in how much damage there is in a collision (not to mention that it reduces the reaction time available to the driver), it is really only one aspect of road safety. Driver skill, maturity and awareness, as well as car maintenance are also very important (I would say more, at least to a point), but they're far more difficult to enforce so they don't get much emphasis. Personally, given a choice between being on the road with other drivers who are attentive but going 10 mph over vs. drivers who follow the speed limit but are spaced-out, I'd choose faster and more attentive any day.\n\nTo answer your question, I think there are enough people that feel safe enough going 10-20% over the speed limit that it has become socially acceptable. This is enabled by the fact that in some jurisdictions, the cops usually won't bother you at this speed unless you're doing something stupid.\n\n(Edit: forgot a couple words)",
"The one police officer I asked this exact question told me that 5-7 mph over is within the margin of error and easily disputed in court, but anything over 10 above the limit is fair game. ",
"Because speed limits haven't changed in 40 years while car performance and safety have gone up tenfold at least. A BMW M3 going 90 is much, much safer than an '89 Ford Aerostar going the speed limit.",
"I think some of it origins from cars having not-that-accurate speedometers. You added 5-10 mph over the speed limit to actually go the actual speed limit. Then it just became a normal thing to do and as the traffic generally goes 5-10 mph above the speed limit now, it's easier to keep up with the traffic instead of obeying the limit, and the circle goes on forever.\n\nWell, at least until the average speed radars will be added to traffic enforcement. For some countries, that's not too far into the future, so a device that checks example 5 mile portion and calculates your time from point A to point B and gives you a ticket if your average speed is above the speed limit.",
"The reason that this is so acceptable is fairly straightforward.\nSpeedometers on cars measure speed based on how many times your tires turn in a given space of time. It takes the size of your wheel as a given value, and then when you have the number of rotations in a given space of time it's really easy to compute the speed. There's a problem with this:\n\n* Tire size isn't a constant value, it can be affected by tire pressure, temperature, even the brand of tire\n\nSo this error introduces a between 5 and 10mph range of error between how fast you are actually going and how fast your car says you're going. Officers like to ask \"Do you know how fast you were going?\" Well, sometimes, you just don't know.\n\n^At ^least ^this ^is ^what ^I've ^always ^heard.",
"Let's take a look at the Ontario Highway Act:\n\n > Penalty\n(14) Every person who contravenes this section or any by-law or regulation made under this section is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable, where the rate of speed at which the motor vehicle was driven,\n\n > * (a) is less than 20 kilometres per hour over the speed limit, to a fine of $3 for each kilometre per hour that the motor vehicle was driven over the speed limit;\n* (b) is 20 kilometres per hour or more but less than 30 kilometres per hour over the speed limit, to a fine of $4.50 for each kilometre per hour that the motor vehicle was driven over the speed limit;\n* (c) is 30 kilometres per hour or more but less than 50 kilometres per hour over the speed limit, to a fine of $7 for each kilometre per hour that the motor vehicle was driven over the speed limit; and\n* (d) is 50 kilometres per hour or more over the speed limit, to a fine of $9.75 for each kilometre per hour that the motor vehicle was driven over the speed limit. 2005, c. 26, Sched. A, s. 17 (7).\n\nThe maximum fine for going 19km over the limit is $57. 10km over the limit would be $30. A police officer would have to decide if $30 is worth stopping someone. ",
"\nA properly set speed limit would use the 85th percentile speed rule, where people could drive as they please, then set the limit at the sped where 85% of the drivers drive.\n\nIn many cases engineering limits are higher than posted speed limits, and in some cases far higher. \n\nThis is probably where people go faster. Their personal limit is probably balanced against risk of getting a ticket.\n\nThat said, in some places, artificially low limits are placed which make the roads more dangerous for drivers.\n\n",
"Because people are hateful fucking maniacs who want to kill me personally.\n\nSource: learning how to drive",
"The explanation I once received was simply that if the cop would be comfortable at the speed you were driving you wouldn't be pulled over. Dependent on road conditions, location, etc.",
"Because driving 35 on a 4 lane road is absurd",
"I wish the speed limit on highways/express ways/ any way with more that 2 lanes had 'lane speed limits'. For example, on a 4 lane highway the lane with on and off ramps (the first lane) would have a max speed of, say, 60mph, the next lane 75, the next 85, the last lane could be autobahn. So many people seem to love to cock block the whole road because they don't want someone in front of them, yet are going almost the same speed as the person next to them. In the greater Phoenix, AZ area, people can be real dicks. Pass or get the hell out of the way! Rant done ;)",
"I think I remember learning in a human factors class that people drive the speed that they feel safe driving at. Implementing safety features into cars doesn't always have the predicted safety effect because they can cause people to feel comfortable driving faster. If people feel safe driving above the speed limit, they will. In the same way, sometimes a speed limit will be set higher than I feel comfortable driving, especially on unfamiliar windy roads.\n\nThe point was illustrated in class by a day when a country switched from driving on the left to driving on the right (or vice versa). I want to say it was called \"T-Day\"? Anyway, they predicted there would be a lot of accidents on the day of the switch, but found that people adjusted to the new hazard by voluntarily slowing down, keeping the number of accidents no different than a normal driving day.\n\nEdit: it was called H-Day _URL_0_",
"A cop came to my high school and said he'd give 5 for your equipment, 5 for their equipment, and 5 for margin of error. Ever since I've always set my cruise at 10 over on the highway and never have had a problem. ",
"There are 2 exceptions to this rule I've found by the way. One is pretty much etched in stone, the other, depends on the state.\n\nSchool Zones: If its 25 or whatever, you better be doing that.\n\nConstruction Zones: With the advent of \"double fine\" in a lot of states, they aren't as tolerant of the 5 over the limit in these areas.",
"Try that in a work zone... Points + summons. ",
"This is interesting to me as I used to be a speeder until recently. I used to always drive just a bit faster than the flow of traffic, generally around 15 mph over the speed limit. It has been many, many years since I've been pulled over. Recently I have been conducting a personal experiment where I peg my cruise control to exactly the speed limit and ignore assholes pressuring me from behind (yes I stay in the right lane) I have found that the difference in the amount of time it takes me to get places is nearly unchanged, especially on highways with frequent congestion. I experience much less stress while driving, increased fuel efficiency and feel relaxed after hour + congested highway trips rather than flustered and pissed while trying to zoom just a little faster than traffic flow. I have been pulled over since the experiment began. I thought that was strange.",
"I think in a nutshell there's an obvious benefit (getting somewhere faster) and usually no drawback (getting caught/crashing). It's viewed as a classic victimless crime.",
"I'd be careful with this. When I was in Oregon almost no one went over, and definitely not more than 5 over.\n\nI live in NY however, and there's some roads you can be 15 over and go right by cops and not get pulled over.\n\nRanges a lot regionally and situationally. Bad weather also means youre more likely to get pulled over for going over.",
"Because generally speed limits are set arbitrarily low in order to profit from speeding tickets. Good 10-15 mph over is generally not unsafe. ",
"It's cultural. In India, they rarely pay attention to many driving laws at all. You might see people diving the wrong direction or crossing several lanes of traffic in an intersection. The extent of keeping to laws is dependent on social norms which change with culture. ",
"People are going to take the mindset that going just a little bit over can't be that unsafe, so speed limits are set lower in order to compensate for this mindset. Say people are willing to go up to 60 in a 50 zone. Could you imagine if it was actually a 60 zone? People would still be in the mindset that only slightly faster wouldn't hurt anyone, they would go up to maybe 70, then cause trouble. I think it is socially acceptable because it is expected that licensed drivers don't know how to drive.",
"The margin of error is usually 10%, if you drive at 110% of the speed limit, you're ok, if you go up to 115% you could get in trouble.",
"The reason is because unless your speedometer is regularly calibrated they have to make allowances of around five mph inaccuracy and another five on top of that is negligible. ",
"It blew my mind driving on the highway between Vegas and LA how I was being passed by pretty much everyone while going 20 MPH over the speed limit.",
"Conversely, why is it socially *unacceptable* to go 5-10 mph under the speed limit?",
"Social acceptability varies. In metro Atlanta, Georgia, USA, there's a little road called Georgia Highway 400 that people routinely drive on as if it were the Autobahn; 80+ MPH in a 65 (sometimes 55) MPH zone. The cops usually only pull people over if the people are driving dangerously (weaving, tailgating, not paying attention), but they also do it whenever they're behind on fine income for the month. \n\nOne rationale I've heard is that the speed limits are generally set low. Officially, they're best-case limits, for ideal conditions on a dry road on a sunny day, and you should go slower when any of those is not true. Unofficially, you can go at least 20% over them in ideal conditions, as long as you're a competent driver who is otherwise driving safely. \n\nOf course, everyone thinks they're a competent driver who drives safely even while tweeting about how ridiculous these speed limits are..",
"If this is a question that often vexes you, here's the best advice:\n\n*MOVE RIGHT.*",
"Having had a brief look at comments, I feel like there is something people are forgetting.\rCars are huge chunks of metal that speed along fast enough to kill one or more people instantly and easily.\rCars are really fucking dangerous, just look at the number of people killed on the road every day.\rWhen designing rules about safety, you have to take everything into account, and find the line between what is unsafe but convenient, and what is totally safe, but inefficient. Inevitably, rule makers will side with safety over convenience (since being late to work may get you fired, but won't get you killed.)\rI'm not saying that all speed limits are justified, but I would suggest the possibility that there is a reason (apart from revenue raising) that some seemingly stupid speed limits are the way they are.\rIn the end, people will never be satisfied. Whatever the speed limit is, people will demand it be raised.\rThat being said, speed limits are there for a reason, and in ny opinion, they should be observed, no matter how stupid they seem.",
"I know that this doesn't really apply to US much, but over here (Lithuania, little country that no one has ever heard of, Northern Europe) the fine for speeding at up to 10 km/h is a verbal warning. As a result, if the speed limit is 90 km/h, then you can go 99km/h and not worry about fines. \n\nAlso, the usual margin of error for most speed guns is 4km/h, so you can technically even go faster, although it's risky, speed guns just keep getting better and better.",
"Per my traffic engineer husband:\n\nRoadway speed limits are set based on three primary factors:\n\n1. Legislative: there may be a state maximum speed limit, for example. In addition, depending on state/municipality citizens may petition for lower speed limits out of safety concerns (reduced speed in school zones, etc.)\n\n2. Roadway characteristics: This could be lane configuration, typical traffic patterns, or any other special cases that affect the safety of travelers.\n\n3. Driver behavior: Engineering best practice is to actually use typical driver behavior to help determine speed limits, partially because any speed limit that is much lower than what people will naturally drive on the roadway will be unenforceable as so many people will be in violation. So they actually do traffic studies to determine typical speed on the roadway, and set the speed limit at a threshold where approximately 85% of drivers are already driving below it. \n\nThe third one is actually a primary driver behind the decision, except as restricted by the other two. So, 5-10 mph is so socially acceptable partially because the speed limits are set so 15% of people are doing exactly that anyways.\n\nThat, and the cops won't enforce it, as other commenters have said.",
"Because we all like to lives little bit in the..... DANGER ZONE! \n\nSource: I'm Kenny Loggins",
"In this thread we will learn that a lot of Redditors don't understand high school physics. ",
"* Drivers think it's safe to drive at a higher speed than what's on the sign\n\n* Driving faster will get you where you want to go sooner, so there's an incentive.\n\n* Drivers have noticed that others don't get fined for driving ~5-10 miles above the posted limit.",
"The theory of speed limits that I know of says that the speed limit should be set so that 85 out of 100 people would be traveling at or under that speed. The idea is that most people will travel a speed that feels safe to them without much outside intervention. \n\nPeople who travel significantly over or under that speed represent a traffic hazard. What would surprise most people is that people traveling 15 mph under the speed limit actually are more dangerous than people traveling 15 mph over. \n\nThe thing that confuses most people is everyone knows that stretch of road where \"everyone speeds\" and wonders why why that speed doesn't reflect that 85th percentile. This is because of people's misunderstanding that slower=safer. The safest speed is the one that everyone is traveling together.\n\nBecause many people travel within 5-10 miles per hour of the speed limit, it is socially acceptable because it isn't causing a traffic hazard and most people recognize that.\n\nI read this somewhere but cant find the source now, found something that has similar information. _URL_0_",
"It depends on what the limit is. With a limit of 55-65, it seems like you can usually do up to 10mph more before getting in trouble. Unfortunately I live in the northeast and the limit is never more than 65 (that I have seen) so I am not sure how it is on other parts of the US where the limits go up to 75. \n\nHowever, if you are on local roads, you get less leeway, usually about 5mph. Of course if you are driving in Malverne NY be prepared to be pulled over and ticketed for doing 32 in a 30.... ",
"It is odd going from California where everyone drives 80 on the freeway (when there is no traffic) to Washington where everyone drives the speed limit.",
"I've had this theory that the speed limit is on purpose lower than what the acceptable speed for the road would be because people are always going to go a little over the speed limit that is posted.\n\nMaybe completely wrong but it seems to make sense.",
"15 is where the fine and points increase.\nthis is the point where its worth the officer's trouble to write the ticket.\n\n5 over on small streets\n\n10 over on highways.\n\n14 over on the interstate, or 95mph if in the middle of nowhere (100mph+ bigger ticket)\n\nthese laws were written when cars did not perform the way they do today. better acceleration, suspension, breaking, traction...",
"I one thing I didn't see mentioned here: on a ticket (at least in PA), the office checks a box indicating the number of mphs you were driving over the speed limit (10, 20, 30, double) and there is no box for less than 10. However, the officer can always check the ”unsafe speed” box. "
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2ydwwz | How do photons act as the boson for electromagnetism? | I know that gluons are exchanged by the quarks in a hadron and are the boson for the strong force. But I couldn't find anything that I could understand explaining photons. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ydwwz/how_do_photons_act_as_the_boson_for/ | {
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"Your question makes little sense. A boson is any particle obeying bose-einstein statistics (equivalently integer spin). A photon is a boson. To the level of understanding that: \" gluons are exchanged by the quarks in a hadron and are the boson for the strong force\" conveys you can just replace a few words:\n\n \"photons are exchanged by any charged particles and are the boson for the electromagnetic force\".\n",
"Because that is what they are, by definition. Photons are defined as the massless particles corresponding to excitations of the electromagnetic field. And as such, they \"carry\" the electromagnetic force. Just like gluons are what we call the particles corresponding to the strong force. There really is nothing to understand here, unless you want to go into all the details of how the theory behind this works and so on. And then of course it gets a bit hard, and you need to study some QFT etc. \n"
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2djhq8 | Does height/size of a person affect the minimum response time possible? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2djhq8/does_heightsize_of_a_person_affect_the_minimum/ | {
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"No, neural impulse move depending on the type of fiber, the neural impulse travels at speed ranging from a sluggish 2 miles per hour to, in some myelinated fibers, a 200 or more miles per hour.....\n\n119m/s (muscles)\n76.2m/s (touch)\n0.61m/s (pain)\n\n\nSource: Necropsy expert/ex-girlfirend"
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mumaf | number of protons in the universe | I've often seen it said on the internet that there are 10^80 protons in the universe. How was this number derived and is it meaningful ? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mumaf/number_of_protons_in_the_universe/ | {
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"1) We know how much mass a proton has.\n\n2) We know that the sun comprises 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. So we assume that the mass of the universe is overwhelmingly dominated by stellar objects. (We may add a bit of mass to account for nebulas, etc.)\n\n3) Based on our observations, we can estimate the mass of the average star.\n\n4) Based on our observations, we can estimate the number of stars in the average galaxy.\n\n5) Based on our observations, we can estimate the number of galaxies in the observable universe.\n\n6) Number of protons in a star * Number of stars in a galaxy * Number of galaxies in the observable universe = Number of protons in the observable universe.",
"1) We know how much mass a proton has.\n\n2) We know that the sun comprises 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. So we assume that the mass of the universe is overwhelmingly dominated by stellar objects. (We may add a bit of mass to account for nebulas, etc.)\n\n3) Based on our observations, we can estimate the mass of the average star.\n\n4) Based on our observations, we can estimate the number of stars in the average galaxy.\n\n5) Based on our observations, we can estimate the number of galaxies in the observable universe.\n\n6) Number of protons in a star * Number of stars in a galaxy * Number of galaxies in the observable universe = Number of protons in the observable universe."
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53jl0z | How do newborn mammals know they have to look for a nipple and suck milk? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/53jl0z/how_do_newborn_mammals_know_they_have_to_look_for/ | {
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"Instincts that are millions of years old, also in most cases the mother will help lead the baby to the nipple. In cases where the mother can't help, I'm assuming scent leads the newborn to the food source, or the newborn just investigates everything with its mouth and ends up finding the nipple on its own."
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czcpg3 | Henry Ford's portrait hung in Hitler's office, but Ford was also described as a Bolshevist by Clarence W. Barron. What was Ford's true ideology and why did Barron describe Ford this way? | Clarence W. Barron, considered the "founder of modern journalism", and after which the Barron's investor magazine is named, wrote the following (emphasis mine):^1
> Aboard S.S. Aquitania, Friday Evening, February 1, 1919.
> Spent the evening with the Dohenys in their suite. Mr. Doheny said: If you believe in democracy you cannot believe in Socialism. Socialism is the poison that destroys democracy. Democracy means opportunity for all. Socialism holds out the hope that a man can quit work and be better off. Bolshevism is the true fruit of socialism and if you will read the interesting testimony before the Senate Committee about the middle of January that showed up all these pacifists and peace-makers as German sympathizers, Socialists, and Bolsheviks, you will see that a majority of the college professors in the United States are teaching socialism and Bolshevism and that fifty-two college professors were on so-called peace committees in 1914. President Eliot of Harvard is teaching Bolshevism. The worst Bolshevists in the United States are not only college professors, of whom President Wilson is one, but capitalists and the wives of capitalists and neither seem to know what they are talking about. William Boyce Thompson is teaching Bolshevism and he may yet convert Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Company. Vanderlip is a Bolshevist, so is Charles R. Crane. Many women are joining the movement and neither they, nor their husbands, know what it is, or what it leads to. **Henry Ford is another** and so are most of those one hundred historians Wilson took abroad with him in the foolish idea that history can teach youth proper demarcations of races, peoples, and nations geographically.
Ford also built a plant in Gorki, USSR. Yet, Ford's portrait hung in Hitler's office, he received the highest medal, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, and he printed 500,000 copies of the forged document "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Ford was later found to be using slave labour from the Auschwitz concentration camp as well. Why did Ford materially support the USSR if he believed the country was controlled by jews, and he was an open anti-semite? Even if you believe personal and monetary gain was the motive, it does not make sense, because Barron apparently had reason to believe Ford was a Bolshevist ideologue.
1\. Arthur Pound and Samuel Taylor Moore, They Told Barron (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930), pp. 13-14. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/czcpg3/henry_fords_portrait_hung_in_hitlers_office_but/ | {
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"There's a few things going on here, so I think we need to back up a little.\n\nFirst, this book, *They Told Barron*, was published two years after Barron's death, \"edited and arranged\" by Pound and Moore. So this is not a work that Barron intended to be published, and these sorts of 'as told to' exposes were quite popular in Interwar America, but not necessarily accurate (I'm thinking of the legal troubles Rose Wilder Lane ran into for her 'interviews' with Charlie Chaplin and Herbert Hoover that were largely fictional). I'm not saying that is happening here, but it's worth being somewhat skeptical of the provenance and accuracy.\n\nNext, the text is *not*saying that Barron believed Ford was a \"Bolshevist\". This diary account is recounting a conversation he had with \"Doheny\", who believed that Ford was. Who is this Doheny? Most likely it's Edward L. Doheny, an oil baron from California who was the rough template for Daniel Day Lewis' character in *There Will Be Blood*.\n\nAlso note who *else* Doheny is calling 'Bolshevist\": President Woodrow Wilson; Charles William Eliot, who was President of Harvard from 1869 to 1909; Frank Vanderlip, President of National City Bank of New York (the future Citibank), and Charles R. Crane, a wealthy oil heir who was a donor to the Wilson campaign and involved in Wilsonian diplomacy (and who later would get into hot water for favorable comments about Hitler). Also notice that Doheny is singling out 'peace committees',pacifists and socialists, who in the 1919 context would have been groups opposed to US participation in the First World War. Basically Doheny is listing a who's who of notable progressive figures connected to Wilson, and groups further to the left, and smearing them all as being in league with Bolsheviks (who in the context of February 1919 were a rag-tag group clinging to power in the Russian Civil War, but with an upsurge in strikes and industrial action in the United States after the end of the war in 1918 were thought to be destabilizing American society - this would lead to the \"Red Scare\" of 1919). \n\nSo why is Doheny including Ford among this number? Ford during the First World War was inclined to pacifism, and was drafted by Wilson into politics. In 1918 he was picked to run as Democratic candidate for one of the Michigan Senate seats, in an attempt to elect a Senate favorable to Wilson's to-be-negotiated peace plans. Ford lost by some 4,500 votes, and in the event the Senate majority was Republican.\n\nSo Doheny seems to be making a very partisan Republican internationalist stance against a variety of political opponents, including Ford, that would have been prominent on the scene in 1919. Henry Cabot Lodge or Theodore Roosevelt might not have put the issue in *quite* these terms, but they presumably would qualify as red-blooded American allies in Doheny's view. \n\nAs for Ford's investment in the USSR: Ford Motor Company did invest in a mass production facility in Nizhni Novgorod (then Gorky) in 1929, using plans based off of the River Rouge facility. Note that this is ten years after the quote given. It's also worth noting that US investment in the USSR in that year was not restricted to Ford Motors, but also included major investments by DuPont, US Steel, Caterpillar, and many others, plus investments by French, Italian and British firms. The USSR was especially open to foreign direct investment at the start of the First Five Year plan in 1929, and with the Crash of 1929 and the worsening Depression, foreign firms were willing to risk the investment and business in the USSR. This had little to do with their collective opinions on Soviet communism, and at the time Stalin in interviews with foreign journalists would go so far as to single out the US for praise.\n\nSo there is a great deal more that can be said about Ford's political beliefs and his controversial connection with Nazi Germany. But I just wanted to ground the text being cited, and note what it is saying, who is doing the saying, and what it is implying, rather than stating."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
8qolaq | why are american school lunches so consistently terrible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qolaq/eli5_why_are_american_school_lunches_so/ | {
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"text": [
"Japan and France fund their schools much better than America allowing them to have better meals.",
"Because what they serve is mass-produced and as cheap as possible. School budgets are very tight around here, so every penny counts - except when it comes to competitive sports, that is (whole other discussion). So by serving cheap, mass-produced lunches, they're saving money. Most public schools are funded based on student attendance and standardized test scores, so nutrition is very low priority.",
"Virtually no US schools only serve pizza and wings. That is generally the supplementary option that student have. The hot line will normally be something like meatloaf, shepherd's pie, roast, spaghetti, sloppy joe, etc along with a vegetable side or two often including a salad. This is the meal you will get if you are on school paid lunches and the options of burgers, pizza, wings, etc are bought with the student's money. (at least at my school)\n\nBut you are correct that the quality is to keep meals cheap. They meet the minimal standards set for nutrition with the cheapest food they can produce. \n\nThere has also not been much backlash from parents against the types of food. Pizza, burgers, chicken wings, etc are considered normal everyday foods here. "
]
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[],
[],
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7y1j8g | What language did Alexander speak? What about his countrymen? Were they Greek speakers, or would their native language have been something different? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7y1j8g/what_language_did_alexander_speak_what_about_his/ | {
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"The problem with your question is that there is not very good evidence to answer the more basic question: what language was spoken in \"Macedonia\" in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BCE. Most scholars agree that it was some form of Greek, but which dialect is not entirely clear (a variant of the NW Doric, or a \"Hellenic\" cousin language of Greek, for example). I'm not well-versed enough to parse out these different theories here. In general, though, the grammatical structures, the basic vocabulary, and the underlying input were all Greek most likely, with perhaps some local substratal influence.\n\nAlexander specifically almost certainly spoke whatever variant of Greek we accept in Macedonia, but also Attic Greek (the specific dialect of the Athenians in that time period). In fact, the Macedonian aristocracy seemed to rely on Attic Greek heavily, and it would be Attic which would form the basis of the pan-Mediterranean \"koine\" Greek in the subsequent Hellenistic period. By means of comparison, the differences between Athenian Greek and Macedonian \"Greek\" were not so really that much more than the difference between, say, Attic Greek and the Doric dialect spoken by the Spartans. The Greek dialects all differed slightly with one another as far as pronunciation, local vocabulary, and some grammar, but were generally mutually intelligible. The Athenian comic poets frequently mocked non-Attic dialects (like Aristophanes mocking Spartan accent in *Lysistrata*, or the lost work *Macedonians* by the playwright Strattis mocking the language/dialect of Macedonia).",
"An excellent exploration of this question is made by Johannes Engels in his essay \"Macedonians and Greeks\" in A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (Edited by Roisman and Worthington. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. pp. 81-98). There are a lot of questions to examine to determine whether it is appropriate to consider the ancient Macedonians to have been ethnically Greek, and one of those is their language.\n\nAs Engels explains, there are some difficulties in identifying precisely what the Macedonian language was like. There are speeches made by Athenians such as Demosthenes (Olynthiac speech, Phillipic speech, On the Crown) who call Alexander's father and his countrymen 'barbarians' (which was a term they used to refer to people who did not speak their language), but that could have been propaganda. Other ancient writers such as Livy and Polybius consider the Macedonians to have been Greeks. Similarly, studies of ancient coinage and inscriptions have been unsuccessful in identifying how close the language was to the dialects of Greek spoken by their neighbors.\n\nIt is most likely that they were speaking some dialect of Greek until it was at some point replaced by the Koine (common) dialect of Greek which became a lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean in the aftermath of Alexander's conquests. However, until then, Engels concludes that \"because of the scarcity and fragmentary condition and/or the bias of the preserved literary sources, the restricted source value of inscriptions and coins, and finally the inconclusive character of the rich material evidence, the Macedonians at least from the late eighth to the early fifth centuries still belong to the many ‘silent peoples’ of antiquity.\""
]
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[],
[]
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d9gstw | why does moon in daylight looks transparent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d9gstw/eli5_why_does_moon_in_daylight_looks_transparent/ | {
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"text": [
"You know how objects in the distance look like far minecraft rendering? Basically but up.",
"I want to share a relevant trick in photoshop. \nSay you want to insert an object behind a transparent thing. \nDon’t make the thing transparent, make the object you are inserting transparent. \n\n**The human eye can’t tell which of the objects is actually transparent** \nIt tends to fall back on remembering what objects are usually transparent. \n \nIn this case it’s not the moon that’s transparent, it’s the blue sky. \nThe blue sky is refracting blue light into your eyes. \nLight being reflected by the moon is punching through the transparent atmosphere. \n\nSo the light from the moon is mixing with the light being refracted by the atmosphere. \n \nYour brain interprets this as something being transparent, in this case you seem to have interpreted it as the moon being transparent.",
"1. We imagine the daylight sky is blue and everything is in front of it.\n\n2. But actually, the sky is just the atmosphere, and the moon is behind the atmosphere.\n\n3. So the sky is *in front* of the moon.\n\n4. It's the sky that's transparent."
]
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[],
[],
[]
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4ials4 | why do people go into deep sleep mode after a few drinks? deep enough for friends to do all sorts of stuff and sounds and they're still asleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ials4/eli5_why_do_people_go_into_deep_sleep_mode_after/ | {
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"An **agonist** is a chemical that can greatly enhance a process in your body.\n\n**GABA** is a chemical in your brain that usually shuts down electrical activity in the brain.\n\nAlcohol is an extremely potent **GABA agonist** that makes the \"shut down\" effect even stronger. Basically all incoming stimuli (sounds, tactile sensation) won't be interpreted by the brain because the enhanced effects of GABA is shutting it down.",
"When I reached this magical state, I awoke to hugging a toilet with the seat as my pillow and did not notice the many sharpie marks on my sleepy face.",
"I saw that video too, and one comment mentioned it was for a school project about viral videos. So although people can pass out, it's no where near this extreme"
]
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[],
[],
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ohqcf | Is it possible to be allergic to alcohol? | Following up on [this comment](_URL_0_) to [this post on /r/funny](_URL_1_). The OP claims that he is allergic to alcohol, and the commenter asserts:
> Alcohol (the molecule) is too small to cause an allergic reaction. Your immune system cannot specifically recognize it. You have some other condition.
This isn't the first time I've heard someone say they are allergic to alcohol - Are they bluffing or is the comment wrong? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ohqcf/is_it_possible_to_be_allergic_to_alcohol/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3hdk69"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"While some symptoms do match an [allergic reaction](_URL_2_), it's not an allergy to alcohol but an alcohol [intolerance](_URL_0_) which stems from the lack of enzymes needed to properly break down alcohol. \n\nThe difference is that in an allergic reaction there's an immune response (involving IgE antibodies) against a particle that shouldn't normally trigger a response, which ultimately leads to the release of various compounds that mediate an inflammatory reaction into the bloodstream. This does not happen in alcohol intolerance. \n\nSource: [Mayo Clinic - Alcohol intolerance](_URL_1_)"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/ohgra/im_allergic_to_alcohol_so_when_i_go_to_a_party/c3hbe2x",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/ohgra/im_allergic_to_alcohol_so_when_i_go_to_a_party/"
] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_intolerance",
"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alcohol-intolerance/DS01172",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergic_reaction#Signs_and_symptoms"
]
] | |
9d1nwm | In 1991 Linus Torvalds first released linux. It soon became the premier operating system for many applications. Can someone explain the history if linux in the 1990's? | *of not if. Please restrict answers to 1998 and before of course | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9d1nwm/in_1991_linus_torvalds_first_released_linux_it/ | {
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"text": [
"This question could best be answered by appending the history of Unix up until the 90s as well, since the success of Linux depended on the efficient design and wide acceptance of Unix at that time. Without Unix, Linux could not have existed, much less prospered."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1io2k5 | where electricity actually comes from and how it gets to our homes. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1io2k5/eli5_where_electricity_actually_comes_from_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Electricity is moving electrons in wires. \n\nWe cause the electrons to move through wires by pushing a magnet next to the wires. In a power plant, we use a large magnet called a generator, and we turn it by converting some other energy source into heat. (coal,nuclear,gas), or by using wind/water. When we turn the generator, the magnets push the electrons in the wire. Your house is hooked up to the same wires as the generator and thats what makes your lights work. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
2ozflo | Why is the Earth larger than Mars? | Planets seem to have a general trend of getting larger the farther they are from the sun. Mars however is quite a bit smaller than Earth even though it theoretically should have had more material to form. Is there an explanation to this? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2ozflo/why_is_the_earth_larger_than_mars/ | {
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"cms21ab"
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"text": [
"This is still an outstanding mystery of the Solar System called the 'Small Mars Problem'. Work in the last few years has offered a few solutions though.\n\nI would say the currently favored hypothesis is the [\"Grand Tack Model\"](_URL_0_), which explains Mars's small mass [here](_URL_2_). The idea is that the gas giants didn't always have nice, constant orbits.\n\nIn the Grand Tack model, Jupiter and Saturn formed farther out, but migrated inward until Jupiter was at about 1.5 AU (Mars's current location). Jupiter's gravity disrupted the planets trying to form in the inner solar system, basically cutting off the supply of planetesimals for Mars, starving it and leaving it small. Jupiter and Saturn then migrated back out to where they are today, letting Mars move into its current orbit.\n\nThere's [another proposal](_URL_1_) where the disk of material is naturally depleted via other methods, leaving very little material around for Mars to form. We still have a whole lot of uncertainty about the detailed structure of proto-planetary disks, so it's very conceivable there are 'traps' with lots of rocky material and then low density regions with less instead of having a simple, smooth distribution of stuff.\n\nAnd finally, it's possible that Mars just got unlucky. Run of the mill planet formation simulations can produce a small Mars in ~5% of the cases just from the random chance of planet formation. Even if Mars was 'supposed' to be bigger, sometimes in the randomness that is the planetesimal collisions of planet formation Mars just got unlucky.\n\nLike I said, the Grand Tack model is probably currently favored, especially since we're learning from exoplanets that gas giants move around quite a lot. It's starting to look very unusual for gas giants to form and not migrate at all, so having a nice model where Jupiter and Saturn move around fits well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.6340",
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.3959",
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5177"
]
] | |
2fk5lp | Spartan women's rights and Spartan society. | I read an interesting post on Tumblr, so naturally I immediately don't trust it, but I'm interested about whether it has any basis.
This is it: _URL_0_
The key points are:
Spartan women owned land and were considered citizens.
Spartan women who died in child birth were given similar honours as fallen soldiers.
Divorce was socially acceptable.
Is there any truth to this? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fk5lp/spartan_womens_rights_and_spartan_society/ | {
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"Yes, this is all true (although the concept of \"citizen\" is tricky). Spartan women were well known for being given considerably more autonomy, authority and respect than in Athens, which was a little Talibany. This is refereed to by many ancient writers, most famously Plutarch.\n\nEdit: quick note that the knife bit may be a later romanticization by Plutarch, but everything in there is from the ancient sources.",
"de Ste Croix once said that “books on Sparta are numerous and mostly bad.” This is doubly so for Spartan women. The traditional view is pretty much like that tumblr post. You find this in works such as that of Sarah Pomeroy. Unfortunately I think a lot of it is fantasy. It stems from a failure to read sources in their context and a desire to find strong female role models in antiquity.\n\nThe problem with saying anything regarding Spartan women are the sources. Too many people elevate the ancient sources to the status of impartial and informed observers. Too few ask questions about the motivation, biases and pre-existing ideas which lie behind the creation of these sources. It is often forgotten that many sources originate in Athens and Athens was at war with Sparta at this time. It must be remembered that a strong empowered woman means a very different thing to us as it would have to an Athenian. \n\nSo lets look at some depictions:\n\nTo start with the *Orestia.* This was first performed during the first year of the Peloponnese war and the *Eumenides* includes a call for a permanent alliance with Argos- which would mean permanent war with Sparta. This is also the first time that Helen is made into the archetypal spartan woman and entirely blamed for all the dead of the Trojan war. Between line 1455-61 her name is played with repeatedly to talk of the destruction of ships, men and cities. (Homer by contrast is a lot more sympathetic in his depiction of Helen, making sure the audience knows that the gods, not Helen, are at fault e.g. Il. 3.163-4).\n\nIn Euripides' *Andromache*, *Troades* and *Orestes* Helen is sexual manipulative and controlling of her Spartan husband, Menelaus. Again, it is often repeated that she is not only a spartan but a typical Spartan woman. It's worth reading the speech by Peleus in *Andromache.* It starts with calling Helen a whore, then all spartan women whores, then describing their clothes as whoreish and then goes on into how Spartan men are weak.\n\nThis is the main theme through descriptions of Spartan women. It is not that the Spartan women are strong, it is that the Spartan men are weak (something an Athenian audience may have appreciated as they were loosing the war) . The same can be said of comedy, of the writings of Xenophon, Plato or Aristotle (with all sorts of caveats attached that I could go into if anybody wanted me to). \n\nThe best article on the topic (I haven't looked at the topic for 5 years so there is sure to be a lot more now) is Ellen Millender's (1999) *Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Women.*\n\nThere is also a good article by Paul Cartledge about modern feminist appropriations of Spartan women: (1981) *Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?* "
]
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"http://imgur.com/RxONdMH"
] | [
[],
[]
] | |
pd8os | Why don't we have artificial ligament implants? | It seems like a basic mechanical implant that should be within the reach of modern science, yet many ACL implants these days are still taken from cadavers. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pd8os/why_dont_we_have_artificial_ligament_implants/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3ohsf5"
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"text": [
"There are oodles of \"basic mechanical implants\" where we still cannot easily improve on our evolved biology. Often this is because there's a lot of subtle interactions and organ-systems that do multiple jobs at once. We still aren't able to manufacture materials that meet the same targets for strong/light/compact as normal bones, for example.\n\n"
]
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[]
] | |
72onl0 | If you were placed in a vacuum outside any gravitational pull, would you be able to feel changes to your velocity? | Einstein said there's no absolute reference frame. How would you sense yourself accelerating when you are your only frame of reference | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/72onl0/if_you_were_placed_in_a_vacuum_outside_any/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Yes. You'd feel [fictitious forces](_URL_1_). Consider for instance when you're on a seat in a car and you feel it accelerating like you're compressed into the seat, then if it stops abruptly you feel like you're inevitably moving forward and probably even caught by the seatbelt. These sensations would not be any different in a vacuum without gravity.\n\nYou're right to say there is no absolute reference frame, however this refers only to velocity. Acceleration is not relative.\n\nRelated:\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6hep1a/why_can_an_obect_be_sped_fast_enough_to_break/diy25p2/?context=3",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_force",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3l1pxr/is_rotation_a_relative_or_absolute_movement/"
]
] | |
6r19tw | why does blue light from a phone trick my brain into thinking it's daylight, but blue lighting in a movie or play makes it look like night time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r19tw/eli5_why_does_blue_light_from_a_phone_trick_my/ | {
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"text": [
"You are confusing two different things here. \n \nThe first effect is a chemical reaction that removes the sleepy drug (melatonin) from our bodies when our eyes are exposed to blue light. \n \nThe second is a theatrical representation of night time that is culturally accepted as a substitution for darkness because plays and films would be pretty rubbish if you just turned off all the lights to represent a lack of light."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
5mbrxa | How credible/accurate is "The Curse of Oak Island" on the History Channel? | I found out when I was visiting my family for the holidays that they have all gotten very into "The Curse of Oak Island", a TV show on the History Channel about looking for potential treasure on Oak Island. They caught me up on the story, and I will admit that I started to get into it too!
Watching the episodes, it's I'm pretty sure that they spice things up in order to get more views. The narrator is constantly suggesting that there might be treasures ranging from old Incan gold to the Arc of the Covenant. And every so often a new piece of "evidence" will show up that sets up a potential link to the Knights Templar, or to 17th century pirates. These seem like pretty grand claims to me!
My question is -- how accurate is any of this? Do "mainstream" historians think there's something there, or do they think that the guys digging are just a couple of cranks who are grasping at nothing? The impression that I get is that there isn't nothing, that is, they didn't just find a random spot to dig and then made up a whole lore around it. But I'm still not convinced that they will actually find anything there other than proof that some pirates landed there once.
Maybe part of my reluctance to completely jump on board with the show is the following: If there was actually credible evidence that suggested that very important historical treasures might be buried there, then the Canadian government would be involved, there would be huge teams of archaeologists there, and this would be a much bigger deal than a couple of rich guys playing with bulldozers. Or maybe I don't understand how this kind of stuff works.
I've read the Wikipedia page, and basically the summary is "Some people think there is something here. Here is how some of them have tried to find it. Here is what some of them think it might be." Can anyone here provide a little more information about how credible any of this stuff actually is? And even if you haven't seen the show, maybe you still have some information about the "Oak Island mystery"? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mbrxa/how_credibleaccurate_is_the_curse_of_oak_island/ | {
"a_id": [
"dc2eoc6"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Hi, hopefully someone can drop by with some info on this program in particular, but here are a few threads on Oak Island to get you started\n\n* [\"Experts\" have found a Roman Sword in Oak Island. Did Rome have the technology necessary to make a trans atlantic voyage?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [This article claims the romans discovered america, is there any truth in this?](_URL_2_) - featuring /u/kookingpot \n\n* [Is the Oak Island treasure complete bullshit? There's a show on the \"History\" Channel about it, but my attempts to research it come up with the usual internet nonsense. Anyone serious about it?](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2p4myn/is_the_oak_island_treasure_complete_bullshit/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54quuj/experts_have_found_a_roman_sword_in_oak_island/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xdonz/this_article_claims_the_romans_disco... | |
3zhlag | in engineering majors at universities, why is that chemical engineering has more ratio of girls than guys compared to other engineering majors? | Are girls' brains wired differently in those subjects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zhlag/eli5_in_engineering_majors_at_universities_why_is/ | {
"a_id": [
"cym6u2k"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Statistically, girls do better in subjects such as chemistry and biology compared to maths and physics.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
nejop | What is the speed of light relative to? | I'm starting to get a hold on the while speed of light thing, thanks mostly to [this](_URL_0_) thread. But the part I still don't understand is what is the speed of light relative to?
I've been told that light emitted on a moving object, say a train, still travels at the speed of light, c, and does not have the speed of the train added to its speed. So if we are hurtling through space at ridiculous speeds on many different orbits, then what is the frame of reference?
The speed of light has been experimentally determined on earth, I understand pretty well how that was done, but let me explain an example:
> Lets say that we take into account only the orbit of the earth around the sun for a minute. We have two giant lasers, each on the opposite side of the planet from the other. The first, let us call it laser A, is pointing towards the direction in which the earth is travelling on its orbit around the sun. Laser B is pointing in the direction from which the earth has come. They both emit a laser beam at the same time.
> There are two possibilities that I can see here:
> 1. Either they both travel at the speed of light according to our instruments. That is, in relation to the earth, as things seem to behave here. This would mean that once they are out in space, they would be travelling at different speeds. One would be travelling at the speed of light PLUS the speed of the earth's orbit. The other at the speed of light MINUS the speed of the earth's orbit.
> 2. The other option is that they both travel at the same speed through space. From our perspective on Earth, laser B is travelling faster than laser A. If this is the case, then what is the frame of reference that "light uses to determine it's speed". If this is the case, then what would we find at the sum of their velocities? C+(-C)=? Is there some "fabric" to space that is stationary on which the speed of light is based?
Thank you for any help you can give. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nejop/what_is_the_speed_of_light_relative_to/ | {
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"* The speed of light is *c* to all observers everywhere, no matter how fast the observers are moving relative to one another. This is like, the major tenet of relativity.\n* When you get to relativistic speeds, velocities no longer add up straightforwardly. .9c + .9c does not equal 1.8c. Kindly do a search for an explanation of this as it has been asked 11ty billion times.",
"Galileo introduced relativity in regards to mechanics, which in short said that the laws of mechanics (moving bodies) are the same for observers in uniform motion relative to each other. \n\nLater Einstein expanded this concept to also include electromagnetism, thus stating that all the laws of physics are the same for observers in uniform motion relative to each other (special relativity). \n\nTo make this work, light must travel at speed C regardless of the frame of reference.\n\nBefore this key concept of relativity, it was thought that light moved relative to a medium called the \"Aether\".\n\nAlso, I want to point out that relativity says that no frame of reference is special, so it makes not much sense to talk about \"a moving object\", because there is not absolute motion.\n\n",
"The whole point of stating that the speed of light is a constant is that - well - it's a constant (in vacuum) in all reference frames. It is not relative to anything, and it is always moving the same speed, no matter where you look at it from.\n\nDoes it sound illogical? Yes, it does, but non the less its true.\n\nImagine this: You are in a (very) high speed train with your laser pointer and somehow your friend is standing outside and watching you drive by. You are sitting in your first class seat and it doesn't feel like you are moving at all. Now you want to point at something on the wall at the end of the train wagon which is about 15 m away from you with your laser pointer. How long does it take for the light to reach the wall?\n\nThis is a simple calculation. The light moves around 3*10^8 m/s and the wall is 15 m away, so it takes around:\n\n(15 meters) / the speed of light = 50.0346143 nanoseconds (directly from google)\n\nCool, so far so good. Now, I said you friend was standing on the ground - outside the train - and watching you go by. Since he has very good eyes he sees you turn on your laser pointer, and he sees the laser hits the wall. These are both facts non of you can deny. He measures the time it took, and can see how far you were from the wall.\n\nHowever, like in the [classic paradox with the turtle and the hare](_URL_0_), when the light has moved 15 m, he can see the train has moved a little bit as well. No much, but a little bit. So when the light hits the wall it should have moved 15m + \"a little bit\".\n\nThis obviously sounds like a paradox, but its one of the exact problems the special theory of relativity solves. The solution is, as you might know, that the train actually gets shorter when it moves (fast) so your friend does not think you are 15 m from the wall - instead he measures the distance to be \"15 m - a little bit\" in order to make the facts match up. \n\nWhen you are dealing with special relativity it is important to remember that the speed of light is *always* constant. No matter what. The solution to peoples paradoxes is *alway* that the distance or time has changed from one observer to another.\n\nSo back to your original question. Both lasers are moving at the speed of light, no matter how you look at it. If you sit on the earth and look at them the light will move at the speed of light, and if you sit at the sun the light will still move at the speed of light - not \"speed of light - speed of earth\". As I said this sounds like a paradox, but its not, because every single experiment you make up in order to show us there is a problem we will just keep answering that there is no problem because the distance or times changed - not the sped of light. The parameter you need to change in order for you experiment to look the same to all observers is never the speed of light (it's always the same), but always, time or distance.",
" > Is there some \"fabric\" to space that is stationary on which the speed of light is based?\n\nThis is essentially the concept behind the [luminiferous ether](_URL_0_), which was the dominant theory of light at the end of the 19th century. In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley conducted an [experiment](_URL_1_), designed to determine the relative velocity of the Earth through the luminiferous ether. What they found, much to their astonishment, was that the answer was 0! In the following years, a number of different versions of the Michelson-Morley were conducted, to test the possibility that the ether was somehow being dragged along by the Earth, or similar effects that might explain how it could be that we didn't seem to being moving with respect to the ether at all. The eventual conclusion, and *the* critical component in Einstein's theory of special relativity, was that the ether doesn't exist at all.\n\nThe reason Einstein's theory is called \"relativity\" is because it posits that the laws of physics, including Maxwell's equations, from which we can derive the speed of light, are exactly the same in any inertial reference frame, i.e., *relative* to any inertial observer. If there were a particular frame in which light traveled at the speed c, and not in other frames, the laws of physics would have to be different depending on what frame you're in.\n\nAll well and good, but if light travels at the speed c in one frame, how can it possibly being traveling at the same speed in a different frame, much less *all* possible frames? The answer is that relativity comes with a number of counter-intuitive results. The most well known are time dilation and length contraction. Less well known is the formula for velocity addition. Remember that velocity is displacement divided by time. Since both displacement and time are affected by a change of reference frame, velocity is as well, *beyond how it would normally be affected*. The math is somewhat complicated, but the result is that the velocity addition formula for relativity is\n\n v' = (v + b)/(1 + v*b/c^2 )\n\nwhere v is the original velocity, and b is the amount you're \"boosting\" it by. For comparison, the same formula in classical mechanics is\n\n v' = v + b.\n\nIf the original value of v is c, then the new value after *any* boost will be\n\n v' = (c + b)/(1 + c*b/c^2 )\n = (c + b)/(1 + b/c)\n = c*(1 + c/b)/(1 + c/b)\n = c\n\nSo if the original velocity is c, we necessarily find that the velocity will be c in *any frame whatsoever*. To answer your question, then, light travels at the speed of light in every single frame of reference there is.",
"It seems to me that the speed of light is practically the way people define distance.\n\n1 unit of distance === how far light goes in 1 unit of time.\n\nSo it's not so much \"relative to what\" it's \"that's what it's defined as\".",
"An observer in space, in the path of one of the lasers would still measure it as moving at the speed of light. However if they observed Laser A, the velocity of the Earth would cause the beam to be blueshifted, and if they observed Laser B, then they would observe the beam to be redshifted by an identical amount.\n\nSo option 1 is closer, but still not quite right. They would look identical in Earth's reference frame and different in space, just that their frequency would be what differs and not their velocity.",
"Don't make it so \"funky\"\n\nTry this instead: Two laser pointers travel through space, paralell to eachother, at > almost < the same speed. One is catching up to the other and at the moment of passing it would look like this.\n\nLets paint:\n\n=-------------\n\n=-------------\n\nSee those laser pointers? You can't tell which one is moving faster from the light emitted, because it would be the same regardless of the speed of the source. You can point one backwards and the speed of the lights would still be c, when measured. Not \"c+speed of source\".",
"On a side note, where is RobotRollCall? I miss her ;[",
"* The speed of light is *c* to all observers everywhere, no matter how fast the observers are moving relative to one another. This is like, the major tenet of relativity.\n* When you get to relativistic speeds, velocities no longer add up straightforwardly. .9c + .9c does not equal 1.8c. Kindly do a search for an explanation of this as it has been asked 11ty billion times.",
"Galileo introduced relativity in regards to mechanics, which in short said that the laws of mechanics (moving bodies) are the same for observers in uniform motion relative to each other. \n\nLater Einstein expanded this concept to also include electromagnetism, thus stating that all the laws of physics are the same for observers in uniform motion relative to each other (special relativity). \n\nTo make this work, light must travel at speed C regardless of the frame of reference.\n\nBefore this key concept of relativity, it was thought that light moved relative to a medium called the \"Aether\".\n\nAlso, I want to point out that relativity says that no frame of reference is special, so it makes not much sense to talk about \"a moving object\", because there is not absolute motion.\n\n",
"The whole point of stating that the speed of light is a constant is that - well - it's a constant (in vacuum) in all reference frames. It is not relative to anything, and it is always moving the same speed, no matter where you look at it from.\n\nDoes it sound illogical? Yes, it does, but non the less its true.\n\nImagine this: You are in a (very) high speed train with your laser pointer and somehow your friend is standing outside and watching you drive by. You are sitting in your first class seat and it doesn't feel like you are moving at all. Now you want to point at something on the wall at the end of the train wagon which is about 15 m away from you with your laser pointer. How long does it take for the light to reach the wall?\n\nThis is a simple calculation. The light moves around 3*10^8 m/s and the wall is 15 m away, so it takes around:\n\n(15 meters) / the speed of light = 50.0346143 nanoseconds (directly from google)\n\nCool, so far so good. Now, I said you friend was standing on the ground - outside the train - and watching you go by. Since he has very good eyes he sees you turn on your laser pointer, and he sees the laser hits the wall. These are both facts non of you can deny. He measures the time it took, and can see how far you were from the wall.\n\nHowever, like in the [classic paradox with the turtle and the hare](_URL_0_), when the light has moved 15 m, he can see the train has moved a little bit as well. No much, but a little bit. So when the light hits the wall it should have moved 15m + \"a little bit\".\n\nThis obviously sounds like a paradox, but its one of the exact problems the special theory of relativity solves. The solution is, as you might know, that the train actually gets shorter when it moves (fast) so your friend does not think you are 15 m from the wall - instead he measures the distance to be \"15 m - a little bit\" in order to make the facts match up. \n\nWhen you are dealing with special relativity it is important to remember that the speed of light is *always* constant. No matter what. The solution to peoples paradoxes is *alway* that the distance or time has changed from one observer to another.\n\nSo back to your original question. Both lasers are moving at the speed of light, no matter how you look at it. If you sit on the earth and look at them the light will move at the speed of light, and if you sit at the sun the light will still move at the speed of light - not \"speed of light - speed of earth\". As I said this sounds like a paradox, but its not, because every single experiment you make up in order to show us there is a problem we will just keep answering that there is no problem because the distance or times changed - not the sped of light. The parameter you need to change in order for you experiment to look the same to all observers is never the speed of light (it's always the same), but always, time or distance.",
" > Is there some \"fabric\" to space that is stationary on which the speed of light is based?\n\nThis is essentially the concept behind the [luminiferous ether](_URL_0_), which was the dominant theory of light at the end of the 19th century. In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley conducted an [experiment](_URL_1_), designed to determine the relative velocity of the Earth through the luminiferous ether. What they found, much to their astonishment, was that the answer was 0! In the following years, a number of different versions of the Michelson-Morley were conducted, to test the possibility that the ether was somehow being dragged along by the Earth, or similar effects that might explain how it could be that we didn't seem to being moving with respect to the ether at all. The eventual conclusion, and *the* critical component in Einstein's theory of special relativity, was that the ether doesn't exist at all.\n\nThe reason Einstein's theory is called \"relativity\" is because it posits that the laws of physics, including Maxwell's equations, from which we can derive the speed of light, are exactly the same in any inertial reference frame, i.e., *relative* to any inertial observer. If there were a particular frame in which light traveled at the speed c, and not in other frames, the laws of physics would have to be different depending on what frame you're in.\n\nAll well and good, but if light travels at the speed c in one frame, how can it possibly being traveling at the same speed in a different frame, much less *all* possible frames? The answer is that relativity comes with a number of counter-intuitive results. The most well known are time dilation and length contraction. Less well known is the formula for velocity addition. Remember that velocity is displacement divided by time. Since both displacement and time are affected by a change of reference frame, velocity is as well, *beyond how it would normally be affected*. The math is somewhat complicated, but the result is that the velocity addition formula for relativity is\n\n v' = (v + b)/(1 + v*b/c^2 )\n\nwhere v is the original velocity, and b is the amount you're \"boosting\" it by. For comparison, the same formula in classical mechanics is\n\n v' = v + b.\n\nIf the original value of v is c, then the new value after *any* boost will be\n\n v' = (c + b)/(1 + c*b/c^2 )\n = (c + b)/(1 + b/c)\n = c*(1 + c/b)/(1 + c/b)\n = c\n\nSo if the original velocity is c, we necessarily find that the velocity will be c in *any frame whatsoever*. To answer your question, then, light travels at the speed of light in every single frame of reference there is.",
"It seems to me that the speed of light is practically the way people define distance.\n\n1 unit of distance === how far light goes in 1 unit of time.\n\nSo it's not so much \"relative to what\" it's \"that's what it's defined as\".",
"An observer in space, in the path of one of the lasers would still measure it as moving at the speed of light. However if they observed Laser A, the velocity of the Earth would cause the beam to be blueshifted, and if they observed Laser B, then they would observe the beam to be redshifted by an identical amount.\n\nSo option 1 is closer, but still not quite right. They would look identical in Earth's reference frame and different in space, just that their frequency would be what differs and not their velocity.",
"Don't make it so \"funky\"\n\nTry this instead: Two laser pointers travel through space, paralell to eachother, at > almost < the same speed. One is catching up to the other and at the moment of passing it would look like this.\n\nLets paint:\n\n=-------------\n\n=-------------\n\nSee those laser pointers? You can't tell which one is moving faster from the light emitted, because it would be the same regardless of the speed of the source. You can point one backwards and the speed of the lights would still be c, when measured. Not \"c+speed of source\".",
"On a side note, where is RobotRollCall? I miss her ;["
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2q7dit | how does shakespeare "invent" a word and it becomes a part of every day language when we already had a developed english language? | He's credited with inventing words like "elbow" and "tranquil" but I can't understand how he would even begin to craft a new word and have it actually integrate into the common language. What process would he have gone through to form the word? How were the words so easily accepted into society? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q7dit/eli5_how_does_shakespeare_invent_a_word_and_it/ | {
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"Some of them were easy. UNdress, laughABLE, gloomY. That just change the meaning of an old word (lowercase) by changing the part of speech (uppercase)\n\nSome of them were derived from Latin or Greek. Zany comes from the Italian word, zani.\n\nSome, he probably just pulled out of thin air to fit the scene or rhyme, kind of like comic book writers do today. Bedazzled!\n\nScientists make up words all the time. What makes them become part of the mainstream culture is if they are accepted as meaning something. With scientists, they usually have Latin origins of some sort. Gene comes from Latin for kind or type. Genome =gene +chromosome. Then proteome easily follows as a protein version of genome.",
"There are words added and removed from our lexicon all the time. Words like \"bling,\" \"dappy,\" or \"selfie,\" are rather new additions, something like \"citharize\" or \"eicastic\" are out, and some have morphed meaning. As for how easily we accept them, that's rather easy. If you invent a word for something that would otherwise require a sentence to describe, and people find it meaningful, in due course it too will enter the lexicon. ",
"Because his plays were so widely seen that people started using the words he invented in their everyday speech, so they eventually became perfectly cromulent words.\n\nThe same is happening today, and it doesn't take centuries. In many cases they are words for new things and new ideas, such as \"spam\", but not always.",
"When we say that Shakespeare \"invented\" a word, what we really mean is that's just the earliest recorded use of the word. It's quite possible that many of the words credited to Shakespeare were already in somewhat common use in spoken language at the time, and he was simply the first person to write them down in a text that has survived. Spoken language changes and evolves quite rapidly, and written forms are usually slower to catch up. Think of most slang words (or even commonly used phrases today like \"I can't even\") – these almost always originate in spoken language.",
"Many of the words weren't necessarily invented by Shakespeare. His works are the earliest surviving example of the word being used, but the word could have been in common use in speech, and have appeared in other written works of which no copies survive.",
"English invents, borrows, and modifies words all the time. Having a famous person popularize words they have invented is just an example of that. "
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7gv0zv | Mein Kampf is atrociously written and a struggle to get through. Mussolini claimed to have never finished it. Was this a reason why the appeasers underestimated Hitler's ambitions? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7gv0zv/mein_kampf_is_atrociously_written_and_a_struggle/ | {
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"What's the basis for the assertion that it's badly written and a struggle to get through? \n\nThis seems like a claim that anyone can make about any book they don't like, from “Das Kapital” to “On the Origin of Species” to “Untergang des Abendlandes”. Of course we don't know whether anyone actually finished it, but the book was a bestseller in the Germany in the '30's. "
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6ga6m2 | Hypothetically what is the worst thing that could happen if I don't turn on "airplane mode"? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6ga6m2/hypothetically_what_is_the_worst_thing_that_could/ | {
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"If anything could happen, the signal could jam/interfere with the communication systems on the plane. Those systems could be air traffic control which will be disastrous to some extend but they could switch frequencies and to my understanding, those aren't the same as your phone anyway. But lets assume that for some reason, your phone is broken and it is leaking severely out of its assigned bandwidth and it is transmitting more power than in is designed to: then you could kill communication with the ground and maybe some instruments but I think it isn't possible to kill vital instruments. Meaning: the pilot will always have sufficient control of the airplane to land it manually. ",
"The radio signals generated by your phone could cause a spurious signal in the automatic flight stabilisation system in the aircraft.\n\nThis could cause the aircraft to react to a movement signal from its reference gyros which doesn't exist.\n\nDual redundancy and heavy cable shielding would probably negate this.\n\nAlso the aircraft will be running a simulation of all the signals it would expect to be receiving during any situation and if they wildly differed from each other it would disregard the channel.\n\nAlso the aircraft will be comparing the signals received along both dual redundant channels and disregard any which were erroneous.\n\nThe radio signals could also interfere with any guidance radio signals generated by the airfield causing the aircraft to display to the pilot that runway was in a different location.\n\nThese are incredibly small chances but aviation is all about reducing risk.\n\nAny one regulation put in place is bound to be one amongst a long list of risk reducing procedures to ensure maximum flight safety. ",
"Weren't they thinking of getting rid of that whole thing since the planes equipment are heavily shielded anyways and the power from any reasonable transmitter isn't enough to interfere with the equipment even if it wasn't shielded... I wonder what happened with all that",
"Nothing. In 2015 alone, airplanes [carried ~3.441B people](_URL_0_). Most of them have devices with radios (phones, tablets, laptops). Many of them simply forgot to turn it off. There has never been a single malfunction of any sort attributed to a GSM/UMTS/LTE or WiFi radio not turned off.\n\nAs a side note, FAA does not prohibit cellphone (much less WiFi) operation during flight, see 14 CFR 91.21 (b)(5); FCC and carriers do."
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1av22f | Are fish aware that they live in an enclosed space? (Resubmitted because it was deleted, sadly) | I'm answering this because I thought it was a cool question and it had atrocious answers. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1av22f/are_fish_aware_that_they_live_in_an_enclosed/ | {
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"So, this is the first question I've been really prepared to answer. After reading the other answers I noticed that they weren't accurate and contained a ton of speculation. Anyway, this is actually a fascinating area of research, and spatial cognition in fish is decently well studied. \n\n\nA lot of the work has been done on blind cave fish, which lack eyes. Species that have eyes wouldn't need as much use for a mental map (and thus awareness of the size of the space they're in), as they could use their eyes for navigational tasks. Fish without access to vision can only sense objects by moving close and using touch, or their lateral line system (which senses objects at a range of about one body length). Anyway, when you put a blind cave fish in an arena (or any fish with the lights turned off), they exhibit a robust behavior called wall-following in which they follow the walls actively (see Sharma, Patton). Following the walls is a good strategy for forming maps, because it gives you an idea of what the borders of your environment look like. Anyway, this wall following behavior decreases over time after fish acclimate to their new environment. This ,in combination with some other changes in behavior, has been termed the \"novelty response.\" Interestingly, if you change the arena in some way you can get the novelty response back.\n\n\nThe gold standard would be to encourage fish to form a mental map then use that map for a task. Our lab tried, for quite a while, to do this but it's difficult for practical reasons. Blind cave fish have very low energy requirements and become sated fast, making them hard to condition. They also, for whatever reason, don't respond well to shock avoidance. Our lab has since changed direction, but other labs are carrying the torch (Anything by Theresa Burt De Perrrera out of oxford is a good read). \n\nRefs: \n\nSharma et al. 2009: The function of wall-following behaviors in the Mexican blind cavefish and a sighted relative, the Mexican tetra (Astyanax) *Journal of Comparative Physiology* 195(3), 225-240\n\n\n\nTekye 1989: Learning and remembering the environment in the blind cave fishAnoptichthys jordani, *Journal of Comparative Physiology* 164(5), 655-662. \n\nPatton et al. 2010: Active wall following by Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) *Journal of Comparative Physiology* 196(11), 853-867",
"I have a question that I've been thinking about a lot lately: how sentient, if at all, are fish? Would you consider them to experience intelligence or are their brains more comparable to a computer (in-and-out machine, no new ideas)?",
"I promise a fish-relevant question will follow this. Today, I was watching my Beta (from a pretty good distance away) swim around his bowl for a while. His bowl has a castle tower on the bottom with two openings in it. While I was watching him, he swam in circles around the top of his bowl for a while then suddenly made a straight beeline for the lowest tower opening and popped out the other side. So what compelled my fish to change his swimming pattern so suddenly? Why not just continue to swim in circles? Is he doing it for fun? Do fish experience fun or feel that they need entertainment?"
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ksftg | Could we ever retroactively recycle the trash in your landfills? | EDIT: *our landfills | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ksftg/could_we_ever_retroactively_recycle_the_trash_in/ | {
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"Sure, I don't see why not. There's no problem with that theoretically. But doing it _economically_ is another matter. You'd have to develop the processes and methods to separate and refine that stuff and turn it into something valuable enough to make it all economically (and environmentally) viable. _That's_ where the real problem lies.",
"There is a whole society of people that live off of a landfill in Rio de Janeiro. They make their living collecting and selling recyclable materials. There's a pretty interesting documentary about them called [Waste Land](_URL_0_) available on Netflix.",
"_URL_0_\n\nAccording to almighty wikipedia it's been done since 1953.",
"Sure, I don't see why not. There's no problem with that theoretically. But doing it _economically_ is another matter. You'd have to develop the processes and methods to separate and refine that stuff and turn it into something valuable enough to make it all economically (and environmentally) viable. _That's_ where the real problem lies.",
"There is a whole society of people that live off of a landfill in Rio de Janeiro. They make their living collecting and selling recyclable materials. There's a pretty interesting documentary about them called [Waste Land](_URL_0_) available on Netflix.",
"_URL_0_\n\nAccording to almighty wikipedia it's been done since 1953."
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18bkjv | the sequester and its impact on the national deficit / debt | If the sequester goes through, how will it impact the national deficit and debt? What are some other options? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18bkjv/eli5_the_sequester_and_its_impact_on_the_national/ | {
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"First the sequester: \n\nIt all started in july 2011 in the fight over the debt ceiling. Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on programs to cut, so they pointed a gun at their own heads called the \"Fiscal Cliff.\" The fiscal cliff gave the Republicans and the Democrats about a year and a half to try to find stuff they wanted to spend less money on. If they couldn't agree, they decided, they would just cut from pretty much everything, including things both sides liked. It was meant to be a strong reason to come to an agreement.\n\nIn December 2012, they compromised on a few things, but also decided that they needed more time to think. So they gave themselves three more months to decide what should be cut. But it looks like they might not agree on more cuts, so about $85 billion in automatic cuts are going to go into effect on March 1st, unless they agree on better things to cut. This is the sequester.\n\nSecond: what will happen to national deficit?\nHere's a chart of what will get cut: _URL_1_. From now until 2021, if the entire sequestration goes through, the government will cut $1.2 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office, who try really hard to be neutral, estimated in May 2012 (before the fiscal cliff, so that changes things, but on a pretty small scale) that the sequester would reduce deficits by $15.3 billion over the 2012-2013 period, by $136.9 billion over the 2012-2017 period, and by $328.0 billion over the 2012-2022 period\" (_URL_0_).\n\nNext question: why are the savings the CBO estimates smaller than the actual cuts? if we are looking at $85 billion in cuts in 2013, why would deficit only be reduced $15 billion? The answer is that government expenditure creates economic activity. Eventually, the economy would be stronger if a smaller part of it got eaten away by taxes. And eventually, we need to pay for stuff we buy. But in the short term, cutting government spending reduces both the deficit and GDP, so the government collects less money to pay for its programs.\n\n(If I actually was explaining this to a five year old, and I used to teach kindergarten, I'd use more concrete examples.)\n"
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2fckjw | What is History? Having read Carr, Evans and many others I can't find a simple answer | Hello, r/askhistorians,
I'm in something of an epistemological or even existential crisis about the subject I love. I'm a History undergrad and can still remember the Damascene moment of reading *I, Claudius* on a train when the question to the boy Claudius "are you to be an historian too?" fired out of the page at yours truly. That was then. Now I'm despairing at the confusion that comes from reading about the Philosophy of History and what History actually means.
If the goal of science is not merely to obtain the Theory of Everything but also compress it onto a t-shirt, I seek an answer to the question 'What is History?' that I could explain to a new student. I'm currently incapable of providing an answer even for myself. I've always opposed the work of postmodernists and deconstructionists if only for the destructive impact it has - reading about the Science Wars and the assault on history in 1990s characterises the entire postmodernist enterprise as set on ruining every other academic discipline and rebuilding it in a neo-Marxist ideological framework. This is a ridiculous caricature but there's something pernicious about PoMos and Post-structuralists trashing History after the historical failure of every Marxist political enterprise that makes it difficult to look at the conflict soberly.
But on the response by Evans in *In Defence of History* and the subsequent student primers produced since then, I still cannot find any firm anchoring for how I would approach or describe the subject to others. Perhaps it's a personal limitation but I cannot think of History in anything other than childish metaphors and aphorisms about biases and repetitions that were dolled into us at school. None of the contemporary definitions or understandings of it seem consistent.
I do believe History is essential to human understanding and the consideration of life. Civilization could not exist wtihout it. But this is an idiosyncratic humanist definition and has no sound theoretical or epistemological basis. I'd be more at home in the 18th century. So help thou my unbelief. What Is History now and can it be compartmentalised into an aphorism or a quick defence against naysayers?
Thanks | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fckjw/what_is_history_having_read_carr_evans_and_many/ | {
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"I admit to being a little unsure of what you are asking for. Who are these \"others\" you need to defend history to? Are you defending the practice of history, the discipline of history, the status of historical work, its value in the modern world (value to whom and for what purpose?), or your choice to study it? These are all very different questions, as you can appreciate. I wonder, perhaps, if the reason you find the question so vexing is because you have posed it too broadly, in the same way that many other seemingly vexing questions (e.g. \"Do humans have free will?\") become more clear if you restate them in terms of what you hope to do with the answers (e.g. \"Should we hold people responsible for their actions?\").",
"As a fellow history undergrad and a tour guide at my state's historical museum, I will sum up the conclusion I have come to. History is more than dates and names, memorization and dusty diaries. History is not the just story of the past, but our interpretation of the past.\n\nI am not denying that history is not part a story, in fact that is the very essence of what history is. History is the examination of previous chapters in the story we are still acting out. We would be hard pressed to explain our own present situation without understanding how we came to be in the first place. No, history is the preceding chapters to sociology, chemistry, anthropology, etc. \n\nEnvironmentalists would be stumped to understand global warming if the entire chapter of the rise of industry went missing. Likewise, consumer science's would be guesswork without understanding past patterns of supply and demand. \n\nHistorians, one could argue, provide the background for these disciplines and explain why certain artifacts, events, people, etc. are relevant to their interests. We think about how the world came to be how it was, politically and environmentally so that leaders and scientists can address any perceived hiccups in social order.\n\nWhen I am giving tours, I like to use the analogy of an instruction manual to explain what history does for society. We might not have constructed the parts of the machine or even put them all in the box (shout out the archeologists, our partners in crime), but we will explain how and why you should use them while eliminating unrelated parts. \n\nI hope this helps out. I have complete confidence that history will stay very relevant in the future. People are fascinated by stories and themselves, and history is completely focused on helping explain both of these.",
"I see [that sabbatical](_URL_0_) isn't treating you so well.\n\nRelax.\n\nHistory is many different things to many different people. Some see it as the cultural path trodden by their society which they love or loathe today. Others see it as a testing ground for the intellect. Ultimately history is a construct, either a personal or a societal one, and your connection to history might be loose or tight - it might define you or have only indirectly molded you. \n\nIf you are worried about what you might gain from studying history, then the answer is simple. You can either view it as a career, or as something which supplies a suite of skills for a career (something American employers could do with re-learning, if the number of 'why both with history / is it worth it' questions are anything to go by).\n\nPost-mod./struct. history has a very important place in modern historiography and in our understanding of medieval societies in general. While I am not entirely in the camp of 'we know nothing' I think that the decision that 'we don't know everything' was an essential one in the '90s. It has reopened numerous narratives which dominated our conception of the past and obfuscated what evidence we actually possessed. Perhaps if you actually start reading the sources, and comparing them to historiography from the 1880s through 1970s you'll realise quite how potent these narratives are. Even the keenest mind can be blunted by centuries of peer pressure (see the example of Frank Stenton's *The First Century of English Feudalism*.\n\nFinally, and I state this as bluntly as possible, but remove thy head from thine own arse. If you're undergoing an existential crisis at an undergraduate level then you need to go back to basics and really readdress why *you* are interested in history rather than what history *is*. Until you can set out your objective, as /u/restricteddata points out, you will gain nothing from your inquiry (either personally or publicly)."
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1987nz | why does zimbabwe have $100 trillion dollar bills? | How could their dollar go from being worth more than a US dollar in 1980 to being so worthless that $100 Trillion Dollar bills are necessary? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1987nz/eli5_why_does_zimbabwe_have_100_trillion_dollar/ | {
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"It's inflation. Their $1,000 bills are worth more as sources of fire kindling than they are as tender. When an economy is doing really poorly, the value of the money goes way down relative to other currencies. Inflation is expected in economies (and is very much happening in the United States), but hyperinflation is when it gets out of control. In the Weimar Republic (pre-WW2 Germany), [the same thing happened](_URL_0_). Note that that graph not only has an exponential curve, but the scale itself is also logarithmic. That is outrageous.\n\nSo when does it happen? Generally in times of war or a lack of confidence in government. What's a piece of paper worth anyway? If the government says $100, then we consider it worth $100. If you find a bill on the street you'll be pretty happy. But what if you have no confidence in that government, and what if nobody else-- no stores, no friends, nobody-- has confidence that that money is worth anything? Then it becomes worthless. Money is worth something because, no pun intended, people buy into it. They trust that it is worth something, and that gives it value. Hyperinflation occurs when that trust shoots down. So if you have money in the bank, you lose everything.\n\nThat's what's happening in Zimbabwe right now. Now the government \"disowned\" their currency and they're using foreign money! [More info](_URL_1_)",
"Inflation. Inflation is defined as an increase in price level. Inflation is, in the short run, a tradeoff for unemployment (i.e. decreasing inflation in the short term will generally increase inflation, and vice versa), and defined as an increase in average price level. There are two most common causes for short term inflation, increases in production cost or consumer demand, and one long term cost for inflation, an increase in money supply. Inflation is generally manageable provided wages increase with inflation (i.e., the currency you are paid with is worth less, but you are paid more of that currency to compensate). The rate at which Zimbabwe (and, even worse than Zimbabwe, postwar Germany (in the past, obviously)) prints/[printed] money (i.e., creates long-term inflation) far, FAR outstripped wages. Even if wages had raised in correlation, it becomes supremely impractical to have to carry $500 billion for a loaf of bread. "
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dqa9j1 | how come combining multiple cleaning products of the same type (glass cleaners, wood cleaners, etc) doesnt just make a "super product" that is better thej eady product individually? | I was curious because if I used Pine-Sol, 409, and a generic cleaner...wouldn't it be way better then each by itself? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dqa9j1/eli5_how_come_combining_multiple_cleaning/ | {
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"Different products have different ingredients based on what they are supposed to be cleaning. A generic cleaner that can be used for something like a stainless steel faucet might be corrosive and strip the tarnish or oils from the wood floor or tabletop that your Pine-Sol is going to clean. \n\nA lot of glass cleaners have ammonia in them, for instance - that can discolor or dull the finish of a wood surface.\n\nAlso, some of the chemicals in those cleaners are toxic in their own right, but if you start mixing them with other chemicals it can result in an even more toxic fume or product.",
"Different cleaners have different methods of cleaning that are generally targeted at a specific problem. So some cleaners are good at removing grease while others are good at removing stains. Adding them together doesn't really help in most cases. Using a stain remover on your greasy stove will not help at all.\n\nFurther, combining cleaners can be dangerous. The most common one being mixing ammonia and chlorine bleach. If you do that it releases chlorine gas which is very poisonous (it was used in WWI in gas attacks...so not nice stuff). Other hazards would be mixing an acidic cleaner with a cleaner with a base Ph. Those react violently with each other.\n\nIn short, pick the right cleaner for the job and never, ever mix them.\n\nEdit: A word"
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3g8g9j | what the point of a child getting a degree at age 10. | Can they actually get a job that young or what good (apart from an ego boost) can a degree do to a child? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g8g9j/eli5what_the_point_of_a_child_getting_a_degree_at/ | {
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"I think most of the time, it's an ego boost for the parents. \"Look at how successful little Quentin is! He's studying maths at Oxford, and he's only three!\"\n\nThe reality is that, although these kids might be academically brilliant, pushing them so far so young means that they're unable to identify with their peer groups, and basically miss out on the experiences of a normal childhood/adolescence that would make them into an adult able to function in society.",
" > Can they actually get a job that young\n\nafaik in most countries they can't\n\n > what good can it do\n\na degree just says you are done with some education, so you can just go on and do something else, or go on and do awesome work (not as in a job, but as in research) in that field."
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32zezt | how does a doctor's unnecessary prescription of antibiotics to a patient help the bacteria which the antibiotic was meant to attack to develop antibiotic resistance? | If the bacteria is not in the patients body when the antibiotic is being taken then how is it able for it to develop resistance to that same antibiotic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32zezt/eli5_how_does_a_doctors_unnecessary_prescription/ | {
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"If they are 100 batectia that 2 are the bad ones and 98 are the ones that will be killed by the antibiotics and sudenly 98 dies, there will be only 2 to occupy the same space/foodd resource and multiply. In the end you will have 100 bad ones with no competition",
"Doctors writing frivolous prescriptions is a problem but most of the antibiotic resistant disease strains come from people not finishing an antibiotic regimen and the rarely talked about preemptive use of antibiotics on livestock. ",
"Antibiotics aren't 100% effective, few things are. If you take an antibiotic that kills 99.9% of bacteria, that means 1 in 1,000 lived. I don't feel like googling and freaking myself out, but I feel pretty safe in assuming that in most cases, there a billion bacteria in your body by the time you're showing symptoms of an infection. Killing 99.9% of them leaves a million left a live. More specifically, it leaves alive the million most fit to survive antibiotics. \n\nThis is where we get into evolution: it isn't the survival of the strongest, it's survival of the most adapt to survive. The million remaining bacteria in your body are the best able to adapt to the presence of antibiotics. Give them a few thousand generations ([an experiment invovling E. coli hit 50k generations after 26 years](_URL_0_)), and you have a recipe for accidentally directing the evolution of bacteria to be resistant to antibiotics.\n\nAlso, think about this: when was the last time you finished a course of antibiotics? For most people, the answer is probably never. You take them like your doctor tells you until you feel better and leave the rest of the meds in your medicine cabinet until you start feeling sick again. Right, about that: that helps the above along. You know the expression \"what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger\"? Yeah, think about that in the context of bacteria."
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5mkm3j | why does the southern united states react so badly to cold weather? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mkm3j/eli5_why_does_the_southern_united_states_react_so/ | {
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"The Southern US doesn't experience cold weather as frequently as other regions so is unused to it. Also southern cities are less prepared to handle the weather conditions that come from colder weather (e.g., ice, snow). People also have less experience driving in those conditions and have accidents or are afraid they'll have accidents. Essentially, lack of familiarity and preparedness with cold weather. \n\nSource: grew up and live in the southern US, lived a long time in the Midwestern US.",
"Infrastructure can play a part. I grew up in New Mexico and when heavy snow hit (once in a blue moon), we had to borrow plows from Colorado. I'm living in Minnesota now and there are actual fleets of said plows here. If you're living somewhere that only needs plows every so often, chances are good that government resources have been allocated elsewhere, towards more pressing concerns.",
"I've lived in the South my entire life. In addition to the lack of infrastructure, from what I understand, the difference is here in the South, snow is usually preceded by rain that then freezes on the ground or freezing rain/sleet. This makes the roads much more dangerous than if it was just snow. "
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5gwu5i | Could carbon dioxide ever freeze out of the air? | Carbon dioxide has a melting point of -57C and a sublimation point of -79C. The coldest natural temperature recorded on earth was -89C. At this temperature could carbon dioxide naturally "freeze out of the air" and condense on the ground? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5gwu5i/could_carbon_dioxide_ever_freeze_out_of_the_air/ | {
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" > The coldest natural temperature recorded on earth was -89C\n\nYes this is true, and at Standard Temperature-Pressure this is cold enough, but this recorded temperature was also at Vostok, Antarctica which is at 3288m elevation, meaning the air pressure is slightly lower. The sublimation point of -79C is only true at 1 atm of pressure, which means sea level. At an elevation of 3288m and air temperature of -79C, the air pressure will be only 0.54 atm. That's a huge difference and it means -79C won't cut it you'll need even lower temperatures.\n\n[If you look at this Temperature-Pressure Diagram](_URL_0_) you'll see that at about 0.54 atm you're going to need closer to -90C. It's really close though, so -89C miiiiight barely be enough.\n\nHowever, even if -89C is cold enough, the next issue is partial pressure. There is such a little concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that it will not accumulate at a rate fast enough to consider solid.\n\nTL;DR: This particular part of the Earth can probably get cold enough, but no it won't form solid CO2\n\n_URL_1_"
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4fbsg3 | Medieval bastard daughters - were they ever acknowledged? | Most talk of nobles acknowledging their bastard children is about sons. Are there cases of bastard daughters being acknowledged and given the family name of their father/being taken into the family?
This question mostly pertains to medieval Western-European nobility (say 1100-1300), but I'd love to hear of any cases throughout history. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4fbsg3/medieval_bastard_daughters_were_they_ever/ | {
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"Technically, two bastards became Queens of England.\n\nWhen Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon on the grounds that their marriage was illegal, he was, by the legal standards of the time, declaring that they had never been properly married. Thus, any children (ie Princess Mary) were not legal children and so were bastards. Mary was packed off to the countryside, where she stayed with a guardian, and was thoroughly miserable.\n\nSimilarly, when Henry executed Anne Boleyn, again, it was considered that Elizabeth was also a bastard. \n\nHowever, as it happened Henry only had the one son, and he had to consider who would inherit if the worst happened and his son died without heirs. There were distant cousins and cousins-once-removed, but he certainly didn't want his Catholic nephew, James V of Scotland, to inherit (bear in mind that, in the end, James V was killed by an army sent by Henry who felt James had insulted him: that's how much he disliked his nephew).\nSo, he issued a law of succession that put Mary and Elizabeth back into the line, after Edward, essentially legitimising them.\n\nAs it happened of course, Edward died young, without children, and so Mary, then Elizabeth, and then finally James V's grandson James VI inherited.\n\n(One point of clarification: I don't actually know when Henry wrote this act of succession. James V might have been dead by then, he was killed 5 years before Henry's death. But having England inherited by a Catholic child living in France and engaged to the King of France would have been even worse.)\n"
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djmrir | Is wartime rationing actually a good idea or does it have a detrimental effect on Wartime finance and economies? | In *Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at war, 1914-1918*, Alexander Watson discusses that although the Central Powers decision to introduce rationing/maximum prices etc did initially help to create a *we're all in this together* mentality (obviously important for morale etc) as time went on it actually contributed to increasing financial and supply issues/shortages.
For example, he points out
> how maximum prices (that often took little account of production costs) provided little incentive for farmers (who during harvest time might be forced to work 18 hour days) to produce more food and in some situations it actually encouraged farmers to *waste* valuable crops as livestock feed (because fodder was actually more expensive than the crop max price) at a time when the central powers were often very short of food (due to shortages of food/fertiliser imports, war damage etc). (Heavily paraphrased, *Deprivation, Ring of Steel*)
I've seen similar criticisms regarding rationing/max prices etc during WW2 as well and I just wondered why rationing is often introduced even though it seems to generate these longer-term side-effects (i.e. it can actually lower overall available stocks)? **Has anyone ever done a 'what if they hadn't introduced max prices etc'**; does the good outweigh the bad? Or is it more complicated with rationing serving as more of a political rather than economic/financial option e.g. rationing is introduced not (only) to hopefully ensure more equitable distribution of limited resources per se but because that's what it superficially appears to do (i.e. for political/public morale reasons)?
**Thanks for reading** | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/djmrir/is_wartime_rationing_actually_a_good_idea_or_does/ | {
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"When a 20th century state decides to convert to a war economy, they are committing to a drastic change in every facet of economic life. Huge numbers of people (especially farmers) are conscripted. Factories stop making cars and start making bombers. Food becomes scare. Consumer goods become even more scarce. \n\nThere is only one way in the 20th century that this was accomplished. Basically the government takes over the economy and a market economy (to a greater or lesser degree) in peacetime becomes a command or centrally planned economy in wartime. No citizen or firm gets to opt-out of this process, it's coercive by one means or another. If you manage a firm and you want to make and sell say, cooking pots, too bad, you don't get a metal allocation/ration, your workers get drafted, and then you get drafted or go out of business and have to take a job in a munitions factory to keep yourself fed (or more likely you direct your firm to find a way to make bullets instead of frypans). This is actually what the government intends, they want to basically control as much production as possible and direct it towards war material. A pound of steel not in a frying pan can be put into a warship.\n\nRationing and Price Ceilings are just one tool in the arsenal government bodies will use to take a huge chunk of civilian production and force it into wartime uses.\n\nOf course, it's quite difficult to organize the governmental machinery to centrally plan an economy during the war. A lot of stuff gets mismanaged. Too many farm workers are drafted and the harvest rots in fields, or too many guns are produced but not enough ammunition. Often a rationing scheme goes awry like the one you quoted. Sometimes if they're clever, governments realize that a given rationing approach won't be optimal, say, if you ration rubber tires, people will just run their vehicles until the tires fall off and then absenteeism will rise because they can't get to work. Instead, governments may ration Gasoline/Petrol, (whether there is a shortage or not) and then people only drive essential trips and find other ways to get to work. So rationing can work better or worse depending on how it is structured and organized and it's difficult to manage correctly.\n\nBasically the government knows that rationing is not a perfectly efficient option, but they don't know any less coercive and ham handed way to organize the economy. Rationing is actually less coercive and inefficient than pillage and forced labor, which the Germans used extensively in WWII, and was quite common in war before the 20th century as well.\n\nGenerally the more voluntary cooperation from citizens and firms the government can elicit, the less central planning and coercion it has to do. Paying farmers more to work 18 hour days and sell the produce at the market (or to the rationing authority) is better than sending men with guns to force them to work 18 hour days and confiscate crops. But if you pay farmers too much, then something else somewhere in the vast web of the economy pinches and causes inefficiency. Perhaps coal miners can't afford to eat and go on strike or people quit their jobs at munitions factories to scrounge for food in the countryside.\n\nA war economy is just inherently a muddle. The perfect frictionless method of control and coercion just wasn't a thing in WWI, was sometimes better a generation later in WWII (but sometimes also, much, much worse) and hasn't been attempted since.\n\nSo nobody has really tried to create a system of central planning to run a war economy without rationing, and any speculation or modelling about something that complex seems like a doomed project.\n\nSources: \n\n*Klein, Maury \"A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War Two\"*\n\n*Tooze, Adam \"The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy\"*"
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1uj4rw | what is a dimension ? | In terms of maths and physics what is a Dimension? is it just something we came up with to explain things or would Dimensions still exsit if humans didn't ( like how time would exist with out people but hours wouldn't?). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uj4rw/eli5_what_is_a_dimension/ | {
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"Like everything else in maths, dimensions are very well defined. Whether it's made up or exists on its own is a very philosophical question which comes up every now and then in math, and I don't think there's always a consensus, so I'll skip that part. \n\nThe way it's typically defined is in the context of vector spaces. A vector space is, simply speaking, a collection of things that you can add together and stretch by a scalar factor. The best example for a vector space is the so called R^(3), which is the collection of all triples (x,y,z), where x, y and z, the components, are real numbers. You can add two triples by adding the respective components and stretch it by multiplying each component by the scalar factor.\n\nYou may have guessed that R^3 has dimension three. The actual definition (or one of them, there are several) goes like this: The dimension of a vector space is the maximum number of elements you can have that are linearly independent. Okay, now I need to explain what linearly independent means. If you have four elements of R^(3), no matter which, then there is always one element that can be written as a linear sum of the three remaining ones. If you choose only three elements, then that's not always possible (for instance (1,0,0), (0,1,0) and (0,0,1)), so the dimension of R^3 is three. Strictly speaking, this is something you have to prove, but I think in this case it's fairly plausible.\n\nTranslating this concept to physics is a little more complicated. We often talk about the number of dimensions of the Universe, but the Universe is not a vector space. The reason why it's not is that it's curved. This makes it a so called manifold. But the beautiful thing about manifolds is that they look like vector spaces if you \"zoom in\" on them, i.e. you only look at a small patch. If I look at my room for instance, a very small part of the Universe, then the curvature in it is pretty negligible, so it sort of looks like (part of) a vector space. Then we can say the dimension of a manifold is the dimension of the vector space that it looks like up close.\n\nBut another complication comes from the time dimension. From special relativity we know that space and time aren't as separable as we once thought. Two events in spacetime that one person would describe as separated purely spatially, i.e. they happen at the same time, might look differently to someone else who was moving at a great speed relative to the first person. They might say that the two events have a temporal distance as well, i.e. they do not happen simultaneously, and they would say spatial distance is smaller than the first person claimed.\n\nThat's because space and time are part of the same thing, spacetime. It's a four-dimensional manifold.\n\nString theory says that there are even more dimensions, but that they are tiny. Basically, it says that we can describe an event in spacetime by more than four numbers, i.e. (t,x,y,z,v), where v is the extra dimension. But while t,x,y and z can take on any value (well, except t has a lower bound due to the big bang), v can only take on a very limited range of numbers. For instance, while z could be plus or minus 10 Gigaparsec or even more, v can only be between 0 and 0.00001 femtometer or something like that. After that it wraps around. Basically, any atom is much larger than that, so it occupies the entire extra dimension, so it can't really move up and down the v-direction. That's why we don't see them, or at least it's very hard to see them. There are a few experiments going on and planned which might see the extra dimensions if they're big enough.\n",
"Lets assume there is a planet like earth , but the people are restricted to only one dimension.\n\nThat would mean that the planet is constrained to a line, the people and all objects can move only north and south, no up or down left or right etc .\n\nOnly North and south along a line.\n\nLets increase the number of dimensions. Let the people move in 2 dimensions.\n\nNow the people of this planet are constrained to move north south east west , but not up or down. (including northwest north east and everthing else but not up and down)\n\nSame analogy applied to three dimension, the people are constrained to move only up down , north south east west , (and everything in between like north east or north+up, north +down etc)\n\nHope this was helpful ",
"Spacial dimensions are about direction, not location. A location is only defined by its distance in a certain direction to something else.\n\nEach dimension is an instruction on how to get from one point to the other. So the instruction \"go left 1 feet\" is one dimension, \"go up 2 feet\" adds the second dimension. In this case right is just the negative version of left (same with up and down, or forward and backward).\n\nWe only know of one time dimension. The instruction for that is something like \"next friday\". There is also a negative version for that (last friday), so that is still the same dimension.\n\nIt's possible to come up with more dimensions. But we live in 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension, so we cannot express this in human language, only with mathematical formulas.\n\nWould dimensions still exist if humans didn't? Yes. Aliens also need to explain how to get from point A to point B. They probably wouldn't use the same units (feet, meters, days or seconds). We invented and agreed on these units, so we can explain how much to go into a certain dimension.",
"Draw a straight line going in one direction. This is your first dimension! You can tell where something is along that line just by specifying its distance from the start of the line.\n\nNow draw a line so that *if you walked up and down that line for as far as you wanted, you wouldn't change where you were relative to the first line*. Line 2 will be at right angles to Line 1. This is your second dimension. You can tell where you are anywhere between the lines by specifying your distance along Line 1 and distance along Line 2.\n\nNow draw a third line, so that if you walked up and down it, it wouldn't affect your position relative to the first two lines. This will be at right angles to both of them and be Line 3. This is your third dimension! You can now specify where you are at any point in space at all by giving your distance along each of Lines 1, 2 and 3.\n\nNow, you can also move in time without it affecting your position in space - stand still for half an hour, and you'll move along half an hour in time, but nowhere in space! So time is another dimension, albeit one we can't move in as freely.",
"A dimension is basically a direction.\n\nWe live in three dimensions.\n\nX, which is length. \nY, which is height. \nZ, which is depth.\n\nFrom that alone it's not terribly hard to imagine a fourth dimension in this abstract sense. It's just another direction, albeit one we can't currently see or travel.\n\nA core aspect of dimensions is that the number of dimensions is the number of coordinates required to specify a specific location within that dimensional space.\n\nSo for example, in a 2D space (a flat plane) you need two coordinates to describe any point. (x,y). Similarly, any 3D area needs three coordinates (x,y,z). So for a four dimensional area you just need to add a fourth coordinate. (x,y,z,a).\n\nOn time: Some people consider time to be the fourth used dimension. This is because you can specify a point at a specific x, y, and z as well as time. So your four dimensional area can have points specified by (x,y,z,t), where t=time. ",
"We had a nice long discussion about this [just the other day](_URL_0_)."
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1ot21l | Why do cells have receptors for toxic chemicals like snake venom or other different types of poisonous substances? | I am a med student and I've studied cellular biology and know about how cells function/communicate etc. But this question just popped in my head and I can't seem to find an answer. I understand how cells can evolve to have receptors for things like hormones/neurotransmitters which the body produce, but why do we have receptors for things our cells have never come in contact with? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ot21l/why_do_cells_have_receptors_for_toxic_chemicals/ | {
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"The answer is kind of circular.\n\nWe don't have special receptors *just* for toxins and venoms; that's why they're toxic/venomous in the first place! Those receptors have a legitimate function for the cell under normal conditions, and by attaching to or acting enzymatically on them, toxins just stop them from working or make them perform their normal function at the wrong time (\"wrong\" in terms of regulation - like keeping intracellular cAMP concentration too high for too long, which causes excessive Cl influx and fluid loss... which is cholera toxin's effect on a certain heterotrimeric G protein).",
"It's not the case that humans evolved receptors that could react to different harmful chemicals, it's that certain animals and plants have evolved ways of harnessing existing biological systems. These chemicals produced by many species are selected to act on certain receptors because chemicals that do so improve an organism's reproductive success. Some help an organism escape from predators, some even help immobolize prey (black widow spider venom stimulates acetylcholine receptors making the victim's muscles lock up).",
"The poisons are intended to attack and interfere with cellular function.\n\nThe sites that the poison binds to generally have some other purpose and arose first, the venom evolved much later to take advantage of weaknesses in the system.",
"Evolution. Other animals and plants we consume are also living things and over time they will be subject to an evolutionary pressure to adapt to survive in their surroundings, its a get energy or die trying world! Typically this means the plants/animals will evolve to have physical and/or chemical defenses. For instance Apotoxin, the venom in honey bees has anti-inflammatory and anticoagulant effects. Drugs we use, that respectively do this as well are Tylenol and Warfarin. So what is happening is that the venom attaches to a receptor and affects it in some shape, way or form, it may permanently alter it, and/or make it unavailable for some time. It's not that we have receptors for said toxins, all receptors we have, have some viable purpose, or had a purpose. Its that the venom targets these receptors.\n\nSometimes this backfires on the plant though. For example we know leaves/bark of some trees/plants had certain properties that affected us since long ago. Native Americans found that some leaves had an effect on us, said leaves are tobacco leaves and also discovered maple syrup. Down south in Mexico, they discovered coca beans (chocolate). In fact, aspirin and caffeine ARE chemical defenses by plants, that do kill smaller insects that feast on the plant, but on our central nervous system have different effects.",
"Its all about the shape of a protein and its interaction with receptor/signaling pathway. There are sites where proteins can bind if they are right shape. This binding may inhibit activity of a signaling pathway and then cause a symptom "
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aaolj7 | why is space black? aren't the stars emitting light? | I don't understand the NASA explanation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aaolj7/eli5_why_is_space_black_arent_the_stars_emitting/ | {
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"There’s nothing for the starlight to reflect off of (mostly). Imagine an empty room, without any light. If someone turns on a flashlight and points it towards you, the rest of the room still looks black, since that light isn’t hitting anything.\n\nEdit: That’s enough of the “a star shines in all directions” replies, it’s a very simple, imperfect analogy.",
"Stars do emit light, but there's nothing in space for the light to bounce off of. The light bulbs in your house light up the rooms because the light hits the walls and objects in the room. Space doesn't have any walls or objects.",
"While they emit light, very few photons actually hit us. If you take a high exposure picture of the sky you will see a lot of stars and galaxies that you normally can't see. However, that doesn't fully explain it. The universe is big, really big, so where is everything? The universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, so we can only see light from objects within a certain distance of us because the light coming from outside our visible universe can't reach us. It gets more interesting than that, the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Because of this, our visible universe is slowly shrinking. At some point in the very very far future we won't be able to see the rest of the universe because the light can't reach us.",
"it's a combination of age and size. since light travels at a finite speed, it takes time for light emitted arbitrarily far away to reach us. and the universe isn't old enough that there's been infinite time for that to happen, which means that light emitted from far enough away hasn't had enough time to reach us. combined with the expansion of the universe, which is growing faster than light can travel, that means some light *never* will reach us.",
"Minutephysics has a great video [here](_URL_0_) on this topic. ",
"Inverse square law mate. \n\nYou know how when you use a shotgun up-close in games it's an instant kill? The pellets haven't travelled far enough to spread very much, so they cause a lot of damage to a relatively small area. When you're further away, the shotgun becomes a lot less useful. In fact, it becomes less effective very rapidly with distance because the pellets spread out more - fewer hit their target. Your eyeballs are the target, the stars are the shotguns and the light is the pellets.",
"In theory, every single inch of the sky will contain a star if you go far enough. But the light from most of these is redshifted past the visible light spectrum, into infrared and beyond. ",
"I haven't seen the NASA explanation, but if they haven't mentioned it yet, there are some interesting implications to this question: _URL_0_",
"Photons are like a bundle of balls, when they get pushed away from the star, they also get pushed apart, because there is so much distance between the star and our planet, the photons spread out over a long distance, so that only a few hit the earth. ",
"Part of this is, as people have said below, that there is nothing in space for the light to hit and bounce off, so we only see light when we're looking at a star.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTied to this, though, is a concept known as Olbers' Paradox. If space were infinite and filled with an infinite number of stars spread out randomly/evenly, then any direction we look, we'd see a star eventually. If there's been enough time for light to get to us from that star, then every point in the sky we could look at would have a star in it. That's not what we see, so one or more of those assumptions have to be wrong: there can't be an infinite number of stars spread across the sky, or there can't have been enough time for light to get to us from all of them. We now believe that they're both wrong.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you get into the models of the Big Bang, there was a time when the whole universe was filled with light, and we should be able to see that light no matter which way we look...and we do! But because the universe has been expanding, that light has gotten stretched out until it's not visible light anymore, but rather microwave light, which we can't see with our eyes.",
"This is called Olber's Paradox.\n\nIn essence, if we posit that the universe is infinitely large and contains an infinite number of stars (and they are largely randomly distributed), then every line of sight an observer can see should eventually end at a star.\nSo if the universe is infinitely old, every point in the sky should be as bright as the surface of a star.\n\nSince it clearly isn't - we have to discard one or more of our assumptions.\n(They are the universe is infinitely large, contains an infinite number of stars and is infinitely old)\n\nThis is evidence for the big bang - we discard the idea that the universe is infinitely old, so although every line of sight does end in a star, the light from those stars has not had time to arrive yet. (As the speed of light is slow compared to the size of the universe).",
"The light that makes it to us is actually in wavelengths outside of visible light such as X-rays and Radio waves. If we could see in those wavelengths, the sky wouldnt be black at all it would look like this _URL_0_",
"Space isn't black actually, it shines with a very dim microwave wavelength that humans can't see. That is the CMB, whats thought to be the leftover radiation from the big bang. Initially it was yellow light but over billions of years the expansion of space has converted it into microwaves.\n\nAs for the stars, there is just way more empty space than stars themselves. For light to reach your eye it either has to come directly from the source or to be reflected off something. In space there are some things to reflect off like cosmic dust but due to the size of space, all of the light that actually gets to experience reflection gets absorbed by the reflective surfaces themselves before making any significant progress towars earth.\n\n",
"The universe had a beginning. Light has a speed. We can't see things which are too far for their light to reach us and the universe used to be smaller and has expanded so there aren't an infinite number of stars everywhere - space is largely space.",
"There are two answers. \n1. Due to the vast size and age of the universe many stars have not existed long enough for their light to have reached us yet. \n2. All the light from the beginning of the universe is still there and it is everywhere as you are imagining it should be. However, since the universe is expanding the original light waves have become stretched causing them to move from the visible portion of the spectrum into the longer wavelength portions. This is the Cosmic Background Radiation detected by radio telescopes and even your common analog radio. \n\nSo the short answer is - the sky IS saturated with the original light waves from all the stars but those waves are no longer in the visible part of the spectrum. ",
"Space is not black. Take a long exposure of the sky and you’ll see plenty of stuff. There’s a reason our galaxy is called the Milky Way.",
"This is a great question and is essentially the same as one called Olbers' paradox. \n\nThe paradox is basically that if stars are distributed evenly in the sky, and they don't move, and the universe has been around for ever, then the sky should be bright all the time, because even though less photons from the stars far away get to us, there would be more stars in that small patch of sky. The fact this isn't the case was a clue that the universe isn't infinity old and static.\n\nFirst of all we only see stars that are 13bn light years away. Second, the universe is expanding, and the faster stars are a accelerating away results in more red shift as discovered by Edwin Hubble.\n\nUltimately though, in a way the sky is bright. The coldest the universe is 2 Kelvin at it's coldest. This is essentially the afterglow of the big bang. While you can't see it, you can hear it. When you turn on your radio and scroll through the stations some of the static noise is due to that radiation. This was discovered when Penzias and Wilson turned on the horn telescope and thought there was something wrong because they just heard static no matter where in the sky they pointed the telescope.",
"Why is the sky dark at night? This was a question raised by an astronomer many years ago. He reasoned that in any direction, there would eventually be a star. Why don't we see them all, as a canopy of light.\n\nBriefly, the reason is that the further away a star (nebula, galaxy, etc.) is from us, the faster it is retreating from us, producing a red-shift and this reducing the energy of the light from it. Eventually, there are things so far away and retreating from us so fast that we can't see them at all.\n\n_URL_0_",
"They are so far away that not much light reaches us.\n\nTry to look at a town while sitting on a hill far away, those street lights look way brighter when you're close to them.",
"Yes, They still are there in the sky it's just their light it's really really dim for our eyes.\nThere are stars in every point in the sky. What's happening is that light gets dimmer and dimmer with larger distances, the light it's so dim that is not in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum and it goes to larger wavelengths (Doppler shift), that's why galaxies that are far away are observed at really large wavelengths with radio telescopes.",
"Most space is not stars. In fact, space is predominantly empty...space. Plus, stars are far af away so you can't even see them all.",
"So in theory, if a species evolves enough to look up into the night sky in a few billion years (Or Longer), it might be possible that all the other galaxies have moved far enough away that they will base all their science on thinking there is only one galaxy (The one they are in) in the entire universe because the light from the other galaxies is too far for them to see?",
"I did not see this in the comments however i could have missed it, space is full of planets and other stuff / space junk that doesnt produce light and blocks light. So along with the other points made here there is stuff in the way of other stars. Think of how here on earth you can experience this at night you may see other stars but the closest one (the sun) is blocked by the earth.",
"There is light emitted from nearly everywhere in the sky by stars. Our eyes are just not sensitive enough to see it. If we had eyes as “strong” or stronger than the hubble telescope, we would see very little black. Heres a shot from the Hubble telescope soomed in on one of the darkest blackest region of the sky \n_URL_0_\n\nIf our eyes were sensitive enough to see a blanket of stars and galaxies at night, then during the day we would just see super bright light everywhere and not be able to identify our own hands in front of our face. Our eyes are built with low sensitivity so we can see clearly during the day.",
"The universe is actually awash with light energy, but our eyes are incapable of seeing them all without special tools. The wavelengths we can see are on what’s called the ‘visible spectrum,’ which is the only light detectable by the human eye. Thus, a lot of the universe is hidden from us — infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, microwaves and radio waves are all forms of light energy we can’t see.\n\nI learned this from listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson on the StarTalk Radio podcast (on Spotify) the other day. I always learn cool little tidbits like this when he does cosmic queries episodes. You should check it out if you haven’t already. It’s so informative.\n\nHere’s a short article and infographic too: [The Universe That We Can’t See](_URL_0_) ",
"If you shine a flashlight at night into a field, do you see anything?\n\nLight needs a reflective surface to be seen. All materials have different levels of reflective ability but absence, space, does not. \n\nLayman's terms, if this helps. I'm also not a scientist but I understand the concept. ",
"Light comes as waves, and our eyes catch them with nerves which are only sensitive to specific wave lengths. Too short (ultraviolet) or too long (infrared) and it won't be able to interact with our nerves. \n\nEverywhere you look there IS light coming in. After the big bang, everything was very hot and bright. However, this light has been stretched out because everything keeps expanding over time, really slowly. It's been 13.8 billion years, so it's had quite a bit of time to expand, and now this light is too long for us to see with just our eyes, but special cameras can see it.\n\nNobody really knows why everything's expanding, it's one of the great mysteries of our time.\n\nI'm not really sure why different materials interact with different wavelengths of light differently, so hopefully somebody else here can help with any more detail on how the eyes and photosensitive equipment works. \n\n",
"Space is black when we are observing it at a certain wavelength of light. There is light everywhere in space even when it appears black. Our eyes see only some visible light. The far ends of the spectrum of light (blue or red shifts, from gamma rays to radio waves) can be captured with specialized detectors or telescopes.",
"Space isn't dark. It's a wild fireworks show of supernovas and pulsars, gas clouds and stellar explosions; all of it filling the night sky with mind boggling amounts of light and colors. . . that your human eyes don't see.\n\nIf you could see radio waves and/or x-rays and/or microwaves and/or gamma rays, then the night sky would be absolutely blinding. But you can't, so it isn't. You can only see a tiny sliver of all the possible light waves that bombard our little planet; \"visible light.\"\n\n\n\n",
"You can't see light \"pass by\". You can only see it when it comes at your eyes directly, which means light sources (lamps, stars, sun) and reflections (basically everything you can see because light is hitting it from the sun and bouncing off into your eyes). Everything you see that is not a source of light is light bouncing off of it. ",
"Bit late to the party, and I don't have an answer but I remember the creater of the game Elite Dangerous having the same issue when he first turn on his game (with his 400 billion star system) \n\nHe added 'space dust' to counteract it.",
"Imagine a box with a light bulb in it...the box will be fully lit...now expand the box to the size of a house...there will still be light but not very bright further away from the bulb...now add a few more bulbs and expand the room to the size of a football stadium...keep increasing the size...as the distance increases the intensity of the light drops due to the distance it has to travel...it weakens.. Hence space isn't fully lit... It's too vast...also you do have entities( not sure you can call them that) which absorb light like black holes...",
"You know how in a dark room a tiny light doesnt really make it light?\n\nWell space is like a big room, like a reeeeally big room, an absolutely gigantic room and the stars are tiny cheap ass LEDs",
"Its black because our eyes evolved to only see 390-700nm range of electromagnetic spectrum. Its actually filled with waves of light from radio and microwaves to ultraviolet and gamma rays. Its bright as fuck. ",
"\n“...Another reason that the sky may not be bright with the visible light of all the stars is because when a source of light is moving away from you, the wavelength of that light is made longer (which for light means more red.) This means that the light from stars that are moving away from us will become shifted towards red, and may shift so far that it is no longer visible at all. (Note: You hear the same effect when an ambulance passes you, and the pitch of the siren gets lower as the ambulance travels away from you; this effect is called the Doppler Effect).”\n-(source) _URL_0_\n\nI do like how this explains this as i wasn’t entirely sure on the answer myself, so i googled it of course as we do with all things. \n\noriginally i had planned on saying that light is merely a reflection, & there isn’t anything in space for it to bounce off of. wrong, i’m sure. ",
"A Number of reasons **combined** basically but I'll try my best with my reasonings;\n\n1. Universe isn't infinite based on theories such as big bang theory where light is red-shifted (stretched\n2. Also this effect your asking about also tells us that the universe also isn't infinite in time or space as if it was then enough time would have passed for enough light to reach us but also an infinite number of stars would provide a full night sky (Olbers paradox)\n3. Things get in the way sometimes such as dust clouds etc causing not all of the light to reach us. \n4. There is A LOT of space between us and the star light and photons are tiny, over that long distance this causes the light we receive to be pretty minimal. This idea can be thought similar to having finite number of points on a circles circumference (this shows a good example [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)) (the star is the centre of the circle) then tracing out a line you will see these points \"spread\" out. As stars don't make infinite amount of photons at once this causes a dimming effect on the light we see from a star. \n5. Visible light spectrum isn't infinite (doppler effect)\n6. Light pollution hitting our planets atmosphere causes a dimming effect of other visible light (star light)\n7. \"black\" is the absence of light\n\n & #x200B;",
"Every time this is asked , the top 5 or more answers are all highly upvoted, gilded and wrong (and/or focusing on mostly irrelevant facts).\n\nThe primary reason is that our galaxy is full of dust that absorbs visible light (re-radiating at non visible wavelengths). \n\nEver wondered why you can't see the colossal blaze of the galactic centre? \n\nAll the stars you see in the night sky are less than 1% of our own galaxy.\n\nThe darkness of our sky is NOT evidence for the big bang , the explanation is much more mundane. We know about the big bang and redshift from other observations, not from the darkness of the night sky.\n\nThe second-most important reason is that the other galaxies are very far away so the light reaching us from them has a very low intensity. This would still be true even if the universe had infinite age and spatial extent and no redshift. The argument of Olbers about every line of sight ending on a star is a non-sequitur: even if it did, the star may be so far away that (to put it one way) no photons of that star ever make it to Earth.\n\n",
"Also light intensity follows an inverse square law such that a doubling of the distance means a quartering of the intensity. So distant stars never create a whiteout in the heavens."
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48c5hz | Does electronic data have weight? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/48c5hz/does_electronic_data_have_weight/ | {
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"This question comes up a lot and it is often answered incorrectly. Electronic data takes up physical space, specifically, it takes up space on storage devices. I'm going to ignore solid state (SSD) and focus my efforts on hard drive disks (HDD). Before we continue, everyone should watch this youtube video by the engineering guy, \n\n* _URL_2_\n\nThe energy between two magnetic dipoles will go approximately as, \n\n > E ~ m*_1_*\\*m*_2_*/r^3 \n\nWhere the m's are the two dipole's magnetic moments. The dot product between the two vectors is taken. While the following might change when surface energy is taken into account, at least in the limit where surface effects do not matter, the energy will be larger when dipoles are aligned. The energy will be a minimum when the dipoles are anti-aligned.\n\nThus, \n\n > 0000 and 1111\n\nhave more energy than \n\n > 1010 and 0101\n\nThis energy difference *will* show up as mass. Famously we know this because of E=mc^(2). Depending on the grain density and grain orientation of the hard drive disk, we'll need to include different numbers of neighboring dipoles in the calculation. Also because the effect is so astonishingly tiny, surface effects *could* over come this such that the aligned configurations are energetically favored. I have limited knowledge here, so take my statement on which is lower energy with a grain of salt.\n\nNow, think about data is actually stored? Let's consider two images:\n\n1. [The Mona Lisa](_URL_5_) \n\n2. [Kiss performing live](_URL_3_) \n\nDespite the fact that these are two vastly different images who will obviously generate very different bit patterns, they will both approximately have an similar distribution of 0's and 1's. Never will you find a harddrive with absolutely all 1's or all 0's. It will always be a mixture and this is because as you increase the number of bits, the number of configurations of bit patterns increases dramatically.\n\nLet's consider a set of bits, \n\n > 00000\n\nNow let's think of every permutation of bits, \n\n > 00000 \n > 00001 \n > 00010 \n > 00011 \n > 00100 \n > ... \n > 11111 \n\nThe VAST majority of these will be disorganized sequences which have around half the total possible pairings. Sequences with perfect pairing and sequences with little pairing will be rare. This means for most hard drive configurations, any given data sequence will be energetically similar to any other data sequence. Here's a picture of this process for 5 bits: \n\n* _URL_0_ \n\nHere is this same picture for 1 byte (8 bits): \n\n* _URL_4_\n\nAnd lastly, here is 2 bytes (16 bits): \n\n* _URL_1_\n\nAs you can see, there are many more configurations with anti-aligned pairs than aligned pairs. As we increase the number of bits involved, this disparity only increases. This tells us something about the entropy of data. There are relatively few \"ordered\" configurations and many many more \"disordered\" configurations involved.\n\nBecause of this, the mass of a harddrive will not appreciably change as you move data around it because the hard drive will almost never find itself in an ordered configuration. If you could force the harddrive to become ordered, the mass would increase by less than a femtogram.\n\nEdit: Make a correction and added 1-byte and 2-byte example."
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"https://i.imgur.com/68ladmV.png",
"https://youtu.be/Wiy_eHdj8kg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/W0854-Hellfest2013_Kiss_69933.JPG",
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1156bn | In General, Is Protein Denaturation Due to Temperature Reversible? | I was taking a practice test for an exam I have in 40 minutes. I ran across a true/false question asking:
"When organisms are exposed to temperatures higher than their maximum growth temperature, their proteins are permanently denatured."
I answered False, under the impression that proteins would have their shape changed by the changes in temperature, but would reform to their original shape after the temperature stress was removed.
According to the system I took the quiz on, the answer was false for the following reason:
"When an organism's proteins are denatured, it will die."
I understand that this is a true statement, but does not explain the answer of the question, because the question is referring to the state of the proteins not about the organisms viability.
I am wondering if any Reddit Protein Experts or Biochemists could help answer the question in a broad sense.
| askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1156bn/in_general_is_protein_denaturation_due_to/ | {
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"In general no, because the molecules would have to be refolded correctly. Denaturation is more than just stretching a [Stretch Armstrong](_URL_0_) and letting him return to his original shape; the chain can reform itself into a useless shape that happens to be stable because of other coincidences such as incorrect matching up of disulfide bonds, like a misbuttoned shirt.",
"It depends almost entirely on the protein in question. When some proteins are denatured, it allows for the formation of novel, stable interactions between residues that would not occur within a cell, which would prevent renaturation. Alternatively, many proteins require interactions with chaperones within the cell to fold properly, and are unable to be renatured without them.",
"Most proteins in vivo require a Chaperone to fold. If you expose an organism to sufficient heat stress that you denature most of it's proteins (and most of it's chaperones) then very little of the proteins will spontaneously refold to their original shape. There won't be enough chaperones available to assist folding AND you've also denatured what little chaperones were available.\n\nIn vitro protein folding is typically very low yield with very little protein adopting the native state. I vaguely recall that in vitro you can heat denature proteins, cool the sample, add chaperones to the mix and get a better refolding yield."
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3g8ubi | why don't hamsters feel dizzyness when stuck in a wheel? |
Like so: _URL_0_
The hamster that gets stuck and ends up going round and round rather than running with his stationary companion. Do hamsters get dizzy, and if not, why?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g8ubi/eli5_why_dont_hamsters_feel_dizzyness_when_stuck/ | {
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"Owned a hamster some years ago. They do get dizzy, but they don't show it with facial expressions like humans. They also have four legs to keep them balanced. \nIt is hard to notice when they are dizzy in a wheel or a flying saucer, but you can see them walking zigzag and irregularily if they decide to jump out."
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nxhe7 | why don't we spend billions on education? | I am Canadian. I always wondered why tuition is so freaking expensive, forcing some people to take loans from the government, essentially making everyone a debt slave in the long run (sounds like a scam to me). Then I hear about military spending and the billions that get put into it and it just sounds absolutely absurd.
Why doesn't the Government just fund public universities? I don't understand. If we want a better society, the first step is education, no? If everyone can read at a high level, write, pursue their dreams, and contribute to society to make our economy stronger in the long run, why doesn't this happen? Explain it to me like I'm 5, Reddit. & #3232;\_ & #3232; | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nxhe7/why_dont_we_spend_billions_on_education/ | {
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"While this question was asked regarding Canada, I'm sure American redditors have the same question.\n\nThe answer is the US does, indeed, spend billions on education. Granted, the years for the data I'll be posting are not exactly the same, it should still provide useful information.\n\nThe US government spends 5.7% of GDP on education [[UN, '00 - '02]](_URL_1_).\nFor comparison, the US military spending amounts to 4.06% of GDP [[CIA, '05]](_URL_0_).\n\nIt should be noted that this figure is relatively high when compared to other developed nations, and is higher than countries like France, Ireland, Canada, Germany, and Australia. It should be noted, also, that the US has a higher GDP per capita than most developed nations, indicating that the US spends more on education per person than other developed countries.",
"The fact of the matter is too many people are overeducated, and in Australia we have a skills shortage. People who are plumbers, electricians, builders etc are earning MORE than people who have degrees. We need the right % of people taking \"menial\" tasks, and the rest taking \"educated\" tasks. \n\n(i'm sorry if i offended anyone, just trying to say how it is)",
"I don't know about the situation in Canada but the US does spend billions on education but the problem is we don't spend it very well. We're definitely not getting our money's worth. Hell, that's just the U.S. way. We spend billions more per capita on everything for shoddier results than most of the rest of the civilized world. Mitt Romney doesn't want the U.S. to become more like Europe but I think that's just what the doctor ordered. They spend less money and get better results.",
"Tuition is high because government gives out loans which makes more people attend university which makes the university charge more which makes the government give out more loans which makes...\n\nYou get the point. ",
"Because the greater majority of voters are older and have kids that are already out of school. And people have a \"fuck um, my kids ain't in school no more and I ain't gonna pay higher taxes to educate someone else's kids\" mentality.",
"Stupid people don't question anything.",
"Tuition serves a purpose as it makes people wonder about what exactly they're studying. The alternative is - as many Nordic countries do - to restrict the number of positions in several disciplines, taking the choice in many ways away from the people themselves. I'm Finnish and thought it worked fine, but you have to see the downside.\n\nIf you're unwilling to do this, then the only way to make people figure out that 50% of the population can't study cultural anthropology is to make them realize that they'll have debt they HAVE to pay after the studies. This focuses the mind nicely on studies that results in actual jobs, which in turn reflect *the needs of society*, which is - after all - the whole damn point.",
"Tuition is a good idea in theory: If student made perfectly informed and rational decisions.\n\nThey would be the ones finding the education that maximizes their future income, discounting the cost of the education needed (and lost income for the years in school). I.e. the market quickly gets people into careers where the demand is high.\n\nIn reality student educate themselves for their dream career. In reality nobody know what kind of jobs will be in demand in 10 years time. In reality you don't know what salaries will develop to in 5 years time after the graduate. The only informed decision you can make is to study what seems fun and you can stand working with for a large part of your life. \n",
"Here's a Utah perspective:\n\nWe do. ***65%*** of our money our state brings in goes to education ([source, page 4 of document](_URL_0_)), with 50% going to K-12 and 15% going to higher ed. Even with this, our public school teachers are the lowest paid in the nation, and our public universities, while definitely cheaper compared to the rest of the nation, definitely aren't close to \"free\". \n\nAll social entitlements are simply ridiculously expensive. In our case, even if 100% of the available money went to education, it still wouldn't be close to enough. \n\nEdit: Fixed source",
"Nearly all universities in Canada are public. The majority of student education costs are paid by the provincial government. See [page 2 here](_URL_0_): The average full-time student in Ontario pays $6,000 in tuition fees, but the provincial government pays an additonal $7000.* While the government share has declined over the years, it's definitely non-trivial!\n\nSo, in fact, we *do* spend billions on education. For 2011-2012, in Ontario, the [budget allocates $5.7B](_URL_1_) to colleges, universities, and student support.\n\n*These numbers are a few years old, but my 30 seconds of googling didn't turn up anything more recent.\n\nETA: [Slide 28 here](_URL_2_) shows what the Ontario provincial subsidy was for a full-time student in various categories as of 07-08.",
"After Sputnik was launched the US government decided we needed to beat them damn Commies and a ton of money was poured into public education. What was created was the hippies, a generation of young people who were educated enough to question the government's polices and take action against the unjust ones. An educated youth means a generation smart enough to vote incompetent / corrupt elected officials out of office. It should be of no surprise that politicians don't put more of an emphasis on education.",
"Educational Funding\n\nIn 2005-06, public expenditure on education from provincial, territorial, federal, and local governments amounted to $75.7 billion spent on all levels of education, which represented 16.1 per cent of total public expenditures. Of this total:\n\n * $40.4 billion was for elementary and secondary education\n * $30.6 billion for postsecondary education\n * $4.6 billion for other types of education such as special retraining and language training for newcomers\n\nIn 2002-03, combined public and private expenditure on education was $72.3 billion:\n\n * $42.7 billion on elementary and secondary education\n * $5.2 billion on trade and vocational education\n * $5.6 billion on colleges\n * $18.8 billion on universities\n\nPublic expenditure was 82.3 per cent of the total, with private spending at 17.7 per cent.\n\n(All dollar figures are taken from Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators)\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"Yeah I wonder this as well. Here in Scandinavia our Universities are free. ",
"education is supposed to function in a free market. there are lots of important jobs that don't require education like working at the store. the idea is to let the cost of education increase until it is no longer worth it to get education. then, that cost is the market equilibrium cost.\n\n\nusually this process of establishing a market equilibrium cost for anything causes some \"overshooting\". in this case, public education likely overshot.\n\n\nthe problem is that the job market requires education, even if it doesn't help, even if it's just a certificate. so it's become kind of a catch 22. \n\n\nimagine that a 7$/hr gig requires a bachelors that costs 80k and 4 years of time to get.",
"In Finland, where the education system is best in the world, all schools are public and free for citizens.\n [Article](_URL_0_)",
"Let's just say that the military business moves more money than the education business in the short term.",
"Because we have idiots like Ron Paul who want to get rid of the dept of education entirely,which is such a backwards mentality.",
"I'm actually more concerned about spending in K-12 education...",
"The people & corporations lobbying/bribing elected officials can't get rich off people getting educated like the military contractors can by killing people, or the pharmaceutical companies can by medicating peoples' worries away.\n\nPlus, if everyone could get a 4-8 year degree without sinking under a mountain of debt, more people would take them up on it. That would make the program more expensive, society would benefit, and we'd eventually do away with class distinctions.",
"Because, the minute the U.S. Government funds anything, it needs to then have government employees, unions etc. and the most inefficient system around is a bureaucracy, and guess what the U.S. uses to run its programs? Essentially for every dollar spent on kids there would be 10 spent on officials etc. This wouldn't make the school system better, just make the people presiding over it richer. Also, the way schools are run right now, directly pumping money into them always goes into the administration, not into the classrooms, dorms, or elsewhere that it could help the students or faculty.\n\nBasically, if you want an example of what would happen, at best mind you, since college isnt considered essential, look to the public school system, look at chicago, and new jersey public schools. thats what happens when the U.S govt funds education.",
"In my opinion the entire 4 year BS/BA + masters is hopelessly outdated.\n\nWe need to move towards an intense certification-type of education model that can adapt to changing industry.",
"Spending more on education has increased massively but has failed to improve anything. It's just a big money pit. The truth is that TOO MUCH money is spent on education. The problem is not money, the problem is the system itself, which is still using centuries-old obsolete technology such as classrooms and paper.",
"You could spend infinite money on education but it doesn't guarantee anything because some of the population isn't cut out for higher education or just don't have the motivation to get educated.\n\nHowever, spending trillions on defense guarantees tons of jobs for both public and private workers to support and operate the war machine. All of these workers pay taxes too unlike some full time students.\n\nIt's just a matter of where the government gets the most benefit for its spending.",
"Look at Cuba.",
"J. D. Rockefeller once said, \"I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.\" Charlotte Iserbyt expounds on this thought in the [deliberate dumbing down](_URL_0_) of America. The NEA is a failure on purpose.",
"If you, as a Canadian, think tuition is expensive, you're doing it wrong. I got a _URL_0_. from the University of Manitoba, and I paid a total of $14,500 to the university over the entirety of my degree. If $14,500 turns you into a debt slave in the long run, then your marginal increase in pay from your degree wasn't worth it, and you should not have gone to university in the first place\n\nI'm going to do some mathemagick here. When I graduated university, I had paid a total of **$14651.01** to the university. Books don't count, because you can torrent them, borrow a friend's, or use the library. Rent doesn't count because I lived with my parents. This number does not include transportation, but if you want to, $60/mo + 3 hours commute per day in lost opportunity cost. \n\nWhen I graduated, my first job I landed paid me $25,000/yr. From my paycheques, I received **$1,673/mo** after taxes (due to the strangeness in assuming that bi-weekly payments are bi-monthly payments, I actually received 1 additional payment of $1,673 every year but ignored it for budgeting purposes). \n\nKeep in mind that full time minimum wage where I live is $20,000/yr. I was making about as low a pay as I could possibly make in my field. For comparison's sake, someone in my city in my field with my level of expertise and experience can demand a $55-$65k salary, and that does not include vacation time, sweet benefits, quarterly bonuses, etc, that they can expect from it\n\nMy monthly expenditures on essentials: rent, transportation, phone service, groceries, household goods, was **$1,037/mo**. This is a bare minimum calculation: short of going into 'only buy ramen' mode, I could not drop this number any farther. For a more honest number, factoring in beer, coffee, occasional movies, video games, etc, I paid about **$1,300/mo**.\n\nAt the bare minimum subsistence level of expenditures, and my barely-above-minimum-wage salary, I could bank **$636/mo**. Which works out to **$7,632/yr**. At this rate, I could pay off the capital of my student loans in 2 years. Giving the banks an extremely generous assumption of the interest on my loan totalling 50% of said loan, give it a third year to pay off the interest.\n\nI have now just gotten a _URL_0_. in Canada, paid for the entire thing on student loans (fun fact: I checked once and I didn't even qualify for that much loan money), and paid the loans off in 3 years.\n\nI don't feel like showing the numbers for an actual minimum wage job, but I ran the calculations, and if I change my income from $25k to $20k, the time to pay off the loan doubles. However, this does not factor in the fact that a) min wage is raised due to inflation; and b) if you work a min wage job for 6 years, you will get periodic raises. Furthermore, since the entire purpose of going to university is to get a *higher paying job*, this number should be an extremely worst case scenario, an upper bound on the time to pay back your loans. \n\nIf you think 3 years to pay off a loan makes you a 'debt slave in the long run', then I'm afraid you've made some VERY bad choices regarding post secondary education, and I don't want your viewpoint dictating our government's policy towards post secondary education",
"Spending more money on education is treating the symptom of high tuition and not the root problem of the costs that drive the price up.\n\nKeep in mind that the money to fund these programs comes from taxes so the people are still ultimately paying for the tuition. If 100% of taxpayers wanted higher education, and the Government decided to pay $10,000/year/person towards it, taxes would have to increase by $10,000/year/person.\n\nThis demonstrates how the \"billions\" will still ultimately be paid by the people. 100% is not a realistic number; if it were 25%, that would still necessitate a $2,500 increase in tax revenues to fund it (and 75% would be paying for something they aren't getting).\n\nAnother factor to consider besides affordability is the necessity of higher education. Some people don't need it for the careers they wish to pursue, some may not have the intellectual capacity for it, and others may be able to learn outside of formal institutions.\n\n**TL;DR: The \"billions\" would have to come from higher taxes. Also, not everyone needs or is cut out for higher education.**",
"The fact of the matter is too many people are overeducated, and in Australia we have a skills shortage. People who are plumbers, electricians, builders etc are earning MORE than people who have degrees. We need the right % of people taking \"menial\" tasks, and the rest taking \"educated\" tasks. \n\n(i'm sorry if i offended anyone, just trying to say how it is)",
"I don't know about the situation in Canada but the US does spend billions on education but the problem is we don't spend it very well. We're definitely not getting our money's worth. Hell, that's just the U.S. way. We spend billions more per capita on everything for shoddier results than most of the rest of the civilized world. Mitt Romney doesn't want the U.S. to become more like Europe but I think that's just what the doctor ordered. They spend less money and get better results.",
"Tuition is high because government gives out loans which makes more people attend university which makes the university charge more which makes the government give out more loans which makes...\n\nYou get the point. ",
"Because the greater majority of voters are older and have kids that are already out of school. And people have a \"fuck um, my kids ain't in school no more and I ain't gonna pay higher taxes to educate someone else's kids\" mentality.",
"Stupid people don't question anything.",
"Tuition serves a purpose as it makes people wonder about what exactly they're studying. The alternative is - as many Nordic countries do - to restrict the number of positions in several disciplines, taking the choice in many ways away from the people themselves. I'm Finnish and thought it worked fine, but you have to see the downside.\n\nIf you're unwilling to do this, then the only way to make people figure out that 50% of the population can't study cultural anthropology is to make them realize that they'll have debt they HAVE to pay after the studies. This focuses the mind nicely on studies that results in actual jobs, which in turn reflect *the needs of society*, which is - after all - the whole damn point.",
"Tuition is a good idea in theory: If student made perfectly informed and rational decisions.\n\nThey would be the ones finding the education that maximizes their future income, discounting the cost of the education needed (and lost income for the years in school). I.e. the market quickly gets people into careers where the demand is high.\n\nIn reality student educate themselves for their dream career. In reality nobody know what kind of jobs will be in demand in 10 years time. In reality you don't know what salaries will develop to in 5 years time after the graduate. The only informed decision you can make is to study what seems fun and you can stand working with for a large part of your life. \n",
"Here's a Utah perspective:\n\nWe do. ***65%*** of our money our state brings in goes to education ([source, page 4 of document](_URL_0_)), with 50% going to K-12 and 15% going to higher ed. Even with this, our public school teachers are the lowest paid in the nation, and our public universities, while definitely cheaper compared to the rest of the nation, definitely aren't close to \"free\". \n\nAll social entitlements are simply ridiculously expensive. In our case, even if 100% of the available money went to education, it still wouldn't be close to enough. \n\nEdit: Fixed source",
"Nearly all universities in Canada are public. The majority of student education costs are paid by the provincial government. See [page 2 here](_URL_0_): The average full-time student in Ontario pays $6,000 in tuition fees, but the provincial government pays an additonal $7000.* While the government share has declined over the years, it's definitely non-trivial!\n\nSo, in fact, we *do* spend billions on education. For 2011-2012, in Ontario, the [budget allocates $5.7B](_URL_1_) to colleges, universities, and student support.\n\n*These numbers are a few years old, but my 30 seconds of googling didn't turn up anything more recent.\n\nETA: [Slide 28 here](_URL_2_) shows what the Ontario provincial subsidy was for a full-time student in various categories as of 07-08.",
"After Sputnik was launched the US government decided we needed to beat them damn Commies and a ton of money was poured into public education. What was created was the hippies, a generation of young people who were educated enough to question the government's polices and take action against the unjust ones. An educated youth means a generation smart enough to vote incompetent / corrupt elected officials out of office. It should be of no surprise that politicians don't put more of an emphasis on education.",
"Educational Funding\n\nIn 2005-06, public expenditure on education from provincial, territorial, federal, and local governments amounted to $75.7 billion spent on all levels of education, which represented 16.1 per cent of total public expenditures. Of this total:\n\n * $40.4 billion was for elementary and secondary education\n * $30.6 billion for postsecondary education\n * $4.6 billion for other types of education such as special retraining and language training for newcomers\n\nIn 2002-03, combined public and private expenditure on education was $72.3 billion:\n\n * $42.7 billion on elementary and secondary education\n * $5.2 billion on trade and vocational education\n * $5.6 billion on colleges\n * $18.8 billion on universities\n\nPublic expenditure was 82.3 per cent of the total, with private spending at 17.7 per cent.\n\n(All dollar figures are taken from Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators)\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"Yeah I wonder this as well. Here in Scandinavia our Universities are free. ",
"education is supposed to function in a free market. there are lots of important jobs that don't require education like working at the store. the idea is to let the cost of education increase until it is no longer worth it to get education. then, that cost is the market equilibrium cost.\n\n\nusually this process of establishing a market equilibrium cost for anything causes some \"overshooting\". in this case, public education likely overshot.\n\n\nthe problem is that the job market requires education, even if it doesn't help, even if it's just a certificate. so it's become kind of a catch 22. \n\n\nimagine that a 7$/hr gig requires a bachelors that costs 80k and 4 years of time to get.",
"In Finland, where the education system is best in the world, all schools are public and free for citizens.\n [Article](_URL_0_)",
"Let's just say that the military business moves more money than the education business in the short term.",
"Because we have idiots like Ron Paul who want to get rid of the dept of education entirely,which is such a backwards mentality.",
"I'm actually more concerned about spending in K-12 education...",
"The people & corporations lobbying/bribing elected officials can't get rich off people getting educated like the military contractors can by killing people, or the pharmaceutical companies can by medicating peoples' worries away.\n\nPlus, if everyone could get a 4-8 year degree without sinking under a mountain of debt, more people would take them up on it. That would make the program more expensive, society would benefit, and we'd eventually do away with class distinctions.",
"Because, the minute the U.S. Government funds anything, it needs to then have government employees, unions etc. and the most inefficient system around is a bureaucracy, and guess what the U.S. uses to run its programs? Essentially for every dollar spent on kids there would be 10 spent on officials etc. This wouldn't make the school system better, just make the people presiding over it richer. Also, the way schools are run right now, directly pumping money into them always goes into the administration, not into the classrooms, dorms, or elsewhere that it could help the students or faculty.\n\nBasically, if you want an example of what would happen, at best mind you, since college isnt considered essential, look to the public school system, look at chicago, and new jersey public schools. thats what happens when the U.S govt funds education.",
"In my opinion the entire 4 year BS/BA + masters is hopelessly outdated.\n\nWe need to move towards an intense certification-type of education model that can adapt to changing industry.",
"Spending more on education has increased massively but has failed to improve anything. It's just a big money pit. The truth is that TOO MUCH money is spent on education. The problem is not money, the problem is the system itself, which is still using centuries-old obsolete technology such as classrooms and paper.",
"You could spend infinite money on education but it doesn't guarantee anything because some of the population isn't cut out for higher education or just don't have the motivation to get educated.\n\nHowever, spending trillions on defense guarantees tons of jobs for both public and private workers to support and operate the war machine. All of these workers pay taxes too unlike some full time students.\n\nIt's just a matter of where the government gets the most benefit for its spending.",
"Look at Cuba.",
"J. D. Rockefeller once said, \"I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.\" Charlotte Iserbyt expounds on this thought in the [deliberate dumbing down](_URL_0_) of America. The NEA is a failure on purpose.",
"If you, as a Canadian, think tuition is expensive, you're doing it wrong. I got a _URL_0_. from the University of Manitoba, and I paid a total of $14,500 to the university over the entirety of my degree. If $14,500 turns you into a debt slave in the long run, then your marginal increase in pay from your degree wasn't worth it, and you should not have gone to university in the first place\n\nI'm going to do some mathemagick here. When I graduated university, I had paid a total of **$14651.01** to the university. Books don't count, because you can torrent them, borrow a friend's, or use the library. Rent doesn't count because I lived with my parents. This number does not include transportation, but if you want to, $60/mo + 3 hours commute per day in lost opportunity cost. \n\nWhen I graduated, my first job I landed paid me $25,000/yr. From my paycheques, I received **$1,673/mo** after taxes (due to the strangeness in assuming that bi-weekly payments are bi-monthly payments, I actually received 1 additional payment of $1,673 every year but ignored it for budgeting purposes). \n\nKeep in mind that full time minimum wage where I live is $20,000/yr. I was making about as low a pay as I could possibly make in my field. For comparison's sake, someone in my city in my field with my level of expertise and experience can demand a $55-$65k salary, and that does not include vacation time, sweet benefits, quarterly bonuses, etc, that they can expect from it\n\nMy monthly expenditures on essentials: rent, transportation, phone service, groceries, household goods, was **$1,037/mo**. This is a bare minimum calculation: short of going into 'only buy ramen' mode, I could not drop this number any farther. For a more honest number, factoring in beer, coffee, occasional movies, video games, etc, I paid about **$1,300/mo**.\n\nAt the bare minimum subsistence level of expenditures, and my barely-above-minimum-wage salary, I could bank **$636/mo**. Which works out to **$7,632/yr**. At this rate, I could pay off the capital of my student loans in 2 years. Giving the banks an extremely generous assumption of the interest on my loan totalling 50% of said loan, give it a third year to pay off the interest.\n\nI have now just gotten a _URL_0_. in Canada, paid for the entire thing on student loans (fun fact: I checked once and I didn't even qualify for that much loan money), and paid the loans off in 3 years.\n\nI don't feel like showing the numbers for an actual minimum wage job, but I ran the calculations, and if I change my income from $25k to $20k, the time to pay off the loan doubles. However, this does not factor in the fact that a) min wage is raised due to inflation; and b) if you work a min wage job for 6 years, you will get periodic raises. Furthermore, since the entire purpose of going to university is to get a *higher paying job*, this number should be an extremely worst case scenario, an upper bound on the time to pay back your loans. \n\nIf you think 3 years to pay off a loan makes you a 'debt slave in the long run', then I'm afraid you've made some VERY bad choices regarding post secondary education, and I don't want your viewpoint dictating our government's policy towards post secondary education",
"Spending more money on education is treating the symptom of high tuition and not the root problem of the costs that drive the price up.\n\nKeep in mind that the money to fund these programs comes from taxes so the people are still ultimately paying for the tuition. If 100% of taxpayers wanted higher education, and the Government decided to pay $10,000/year/person towards it, taxes would have to increase by $10,000/year/person.\n\nThis demonstrates how the \"billions\" will still ultimately be paid by the people. 100% is not a realistic number; if it were 25%, that would still necessitate a $2,500 increase in tax revenues to fund it (and 75% would be paying for something they aren't getting).\n\nAnother factor to consider besides affordability is the necessity of higher education. Some people don't need it for the careers they wish to pursue, some may not have the intellectual capacity for it, and others may be able to learn outside of formal institutions.\n\n**TL;DR: The \"billions\" would have to come from higher taxes. Also, not everyone needs or is cut out for higher education.**"
]
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"http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp"
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... | |
5e7ig1 | How are earthquake magnitudes revised hours or days later? | Often when an earthquake occurs you'll get an initial magnitude. Hours or Days later it might get revised higher or lower.
What causes the long delay between initial measurement and the revision? Is there human intervention that cannot be automated? Is there data being taken that far out that the wave just takes so long to get there? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5e7ig1/how_are_earthquake_magnitudes_revised_hours_or/ | {
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"Mostly the former. The initial magnitude reported by services like the USGS are automatically determined and then will be reviewed by a seismologist (check out the description for the items on the [technical details](_URL_0_) of earthquake reports and pay attention to the 'review status' bit) and may be adjusted higher or lower. Someone more in the seismology realm can speak more to why exactly the automated magnitude determinations are challenging. In some cases, magnitudes may be revised with more data that is acquired. This is not because any of the actual signals from the earthquake take that long to show up, but because not all seismic stations in all places automatically share their data."
]
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5xnhnw | why do urban climbers that upload footage with their faces in it rarely get punished by law? | People like James Kingston, Nightscape. How do they usually end up getting out, publishing the video and not get suited or simply get a fine for it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xnhnw/eli5_why_do_urban_climbers_that_upload_footage/ | {
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"It is rarely illegal for people to climb things. Some cities that have had problems have made specific laws to prevent it, and some cities with suicide problems have ordinances for bridges, but in general there are no laws stating that you cannot climb stuff. ",
"it woudl be a trespassing charge. the owner of the private property would have to call the police, the police respond, and then would apprehend you on property. \n\nif the offender is not caught by the police.....the police would have a hard time knowing who was trespassing and would have no idea how to find the person that was trespassing...",
"Same reason why rappers don't get arrested for depictions of themselves using weed on videos- the police have better things to do than try to investigate and prosecute someone for a minor, victimless crime that's already taken place and may be difficult to prove. It's not trespassing unless it's properly marked and/or they were told to leave. "
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aldc7j | what long term effects does a polar vortex have on a state/region? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aldc7j/eli5_what_long_term_effects_does_a_polar_vortex/ | {
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"As a biologist, I can definitely tell you that it will have a lasting impact on what plants and animals as well as insects or even microbes survive into the spring.\n\nMany organisms living in nature live and what humans consider pretty extreme poverty. Little protection against the elements as well as often insecure food supplies make for a pretty delicate network of organisms Who all depend on each other in different ways just to create something as simple as a forest.\n\nImportantly, living organisms are only meant to sustain themselves within a certain range of temperatures at environmental conditions. Anything outside of that often results in the lack of ability to produce new offspring as well as death. When organisms of a species can no longer produce offspring, that species goes extinct in that area population numbers cannot survive.\n\nWe could see verdant places in Minnesota become virtually deserts within only a couple of years depending on how these types of cold spells become more and more frequent.\n\nIf you’re interested on how something as simple as a single organism, say a wolf, can change a landscape say bring back waterfalls, other animals, and even change the places trees grow and meadows extend, you should really check out what happened in real life only a few years ago when they were introduced back to Yellowstone national park. \n\nI think it surprised all of us.\n\nHere is a short article on that Parks website, Yellowstone, and there’s a link to a YouTube video it’s only five minutes but it really explains well.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBy the way thanks for reaching out and asking for resources and answers to questions instead of just making assumptions like so many people. \n\nI have a lot of respect for that.\n\n(Sorry for so many typos-I’m on my way somewhere and I am using talk to text)"
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5r2aq1 | how can the president of the united states hold the power to sign all these orders if the united states is considered a democracy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r2aq1/eli5_how_can_the_president_of_the_united_states/ | {
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"Not a democracy, but a republic. However, it's the closest form of democracy compared to other governments.",
"1) We are a republic not a democracy. \n\n2) These powers are a function of him being the head of the executive branch. He is not creating new law he is dictating how the executive branch is to handle existing laws. \n\n3) The President is specifically given the power to control that status of the border. It is one of the basic functions of the Executive Branch. ",
"Not to parrot, but we are a Republic. \nExecutive orders are doctrine in which the President as commander in chief can make an interpretation of enforcement, meaning, he can enforce the laws (and loopholes) that he see's as appropriate in his executive powers. \nIn the balance of power, both the legislative branch have the ability to close the law/loophole, and Judicial has the ability to interpret the law to see if the law/loophole is valid. Ultimately, part of or an entire Executive Order can been deemed outside of the law interpretation in which the Executive Order can be thrown out. There's balance when the system works.",
"Trump hasn't made new law. He's telling the border patrol how the existing law on immigration from high risk countries should be enforced. Just as the president didn't tell the DEA to raid every state legal marijuana grower and dispensary, so can the president tell the CBP how to review and scrutinize the existing visas and application of new visas. Visas have been and are always \"can be revoked at any time for any reason\". Every immigrant, myself included, should know this if they bothered to read the paperwork. ",
"JFC people. This has been explained every other day just about.\n\nThe President is the head of the executive branch of government. This means that he has control over what the executive branch does as long as they don't break any laws, and his executive orders are exactly that. They're orders he gives to the executive branch for them to follow and get things done. Just like how your boss can give you an order."
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20nv0a | Can the body use alcohol as fuel? | You often hear that alcohol is fattening or contains a lot of calories. It's said that alcohol contains 7 calories per gram. But can ethanol itself be used by the body as a fuel source? By what mechanism? Does it ever get converted into glucose that the brain and muscles can use? Does it get converted into fat and stored subcutaneously or viscerally? Assuming that you got vitamins and minerals from supplements and enough amino acids and essential fats, could you survive on alcohol as a fuel source? I don't understand why that would have evolved. My understanding is alcohol is basically a toxin that the liver has to remove.
I found another question on it here but the answers seemed more about causing fatty liver rather than the specifics I'm interested in.
I think a lot of the advice is down to sugars and carbohydrates in the drinks, e.g. in beer/cider/wine or in the mixers e.g. coke. What about if you just drank vodka, which apart from a few impurities mainly contains ethanol and water. Is it as fattening as all the advice warns us? Would 100ml of 40% vodka be like 40g of ethanol or 280 calories (for simplicity I have assumed ethanol has the same density as water)? It seems like a lot of calories. There are only about 36 calories in 100ml of coke. If it does contain that many calories, is the effect on weight gain the equivalent to the same number of calories of sugar?
| askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20nv0a/can_the_body_use_alcohol_as_fuel/ | {
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"Yes ethanol does contain ~7kcal/gram. Ethanol itself isn't a fuel source, but is converted into \"fuel\". \n\nEthanol is detoxified in the liver by this process: \nEthanol - > Ethanal (**Acetaldehyde**) - > Ethanoic acid (**Acetic acid**)\n\nAcetic acid can be converted into **Acetyl CoA** which is used in *fatty acid synthesis*. \n\nEthanol is 0.789 times as dense as water so 100ml of 40%abv vodka, would contain about 221kcal. (= 31.56g of ethanol). \n\nI'm not sure if it's effect on weight gain is similar to that of sugar, though. ",
"The article [Relationships Between Nutrition, Alcohol Use, and Liver Disease](_URL_2_) has some information about this:\n\n > \"*At least under certain conditions, however, alcohol–derived calories when consumed in substantial amounts can have less biologic value than carbohydrate–derived calories [...] This suggests that some of the energy contained in alcohol is “lost” or 'wasted'—that is, it is not available to the body for producing or maintaining body mass. Under other conditions, however, alcohol–derived calories have the same biologic value as calories derived from other nutrients.*\"\n\nThe article [Alcohol and Nutrition](_URL_5_) observes that:\n\n > \"*The mechanisms accounting for the apparent inefficiency in converting alcohol to energy are complex and incompletely understood, but several mechanisms have been proposed. For example, chronic drinking triggers an inefficient system of alcohol metabolism, the microsomal ethanol-oxidizing system (MEOS). Much of the energy from MEOS-driven alcohol metabolism is lost as heat rather than used to supply the body with energy.*\"\n\nBack to your questions:\n\n > Assuming that you got vitamins and minerals from supplements and enough amino acids and essential fats, could you survive on alcohol as a fuel source?\n\nGiven the damaging effects on metabolism described in the above articles, including absorption of certain vitamins, and given that \"*when alcohol is substituted for carbohydrates, calorie for calorie, subjects tend to lose weight, indicating that they derive less energy from alcohol than from food*,\" your health would begin to measurably deteriorate immediately. Another important factor here has to do with blood glucose levels:\n\n > \"*Even when food intake is adequate, alcohol can impair the mechanisms by which the body controls blood glucose levels, resulting in either increased or decreased blood glucose. In nondiabetic alcoholics, increased blood sugar, or hyperglycemia--caused by impaired insulin secretion--is usually temporary and without consequence. Decreased blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, can cause serious injury even if this condition is short lived. Hypoglycemia can occur when a fasting or malnourished person consumes alcohol. When there is no food to supply energy, stored sugar is depleted, and the products of alcohol metabolism inhibit the formation of glucose from other compounds such as amino acids. As a result, alcohol causes the brain and other body tissue to be deprived of glucose needed for energy and function.*\"\n\nBack to you again:\n\n > I think a lot of the advice is down to sugars and carbohydrates in the drinks, e.g. in beer/cider/wine or in the mixers e.g. coke.\n\nThat's correct. The article [How Long Can You Survive On Beer Alone](_URL_1_) describes someone who lived on a beer and water diet for 46 days. But beer contains sugars which provide a less problematic energy source than ethanol. I'll risk a little speculation and say that without those sugars, your survival would likely be severely compromised. As you mentioned, you'd basically be trying to survive by getting energy from a toxin.\n\n > I don't understand why that would have evolved. My understanding is alcohol is basically a toxin that the liver has to remove.\n\nAlcohols including ethanol are produced naturally in animals including humans - this is known as \"endogenous ethanol production\". \"*The typical range of ethanol in venous blood from endogenous ethanol production is about 0 - 0.08 mg/dL*\" ([source](_URL_3_)). Since ethanol is toxic, being able to metabolize it is evolutionarily important.\n\nHowever, the human ability to handle ethanol in relatively large quantities likely goes beyond this. There's evidence that \"[10 million years ago, a common ancestor of gorillas, chimps and humans emerged with an enzyme that could digest alcohol 50 times more efficiently than earlier incarnations](_URL_0_),\" which is hypothesized to be related to diets involving fermented fruit harvested from the forest floor.\n\nOf course, more recently in human history, many societies have relied heavily on alcohol consumption, which has apparently resulted in adaptations:\n\n > \"*Beer and wine consumption have been common in Europe and the Near East for 5-6 thousand years. In fact, the first known recorded beer recipe dates to 3,800 B.C. in Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq). Throughout Medieval Europe, beer and wine were far more frequently consumed than water by all classes of society. It is not surprising that many people in these same populations now have the genetic makeup that gives them a relatively high tolerance of alcohol consumed on a regular basis. Presumably nature tended to select against those individuals who lacked the gene variants that made this possible.*\" ([Nutritional Adaptation](_URL_4_))\n"
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"http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-3/220-231.htm",
"http://books.google.... | |
c1pkz4 | what was the berlin wall | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1pkz4/eli5_what_was_the_berlin_wall/ | {
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"A wall that separated the east and west side of Berlin, Germany around the time of the Cold War.",
"A long line of concrete bricks side by side with spiky metal wire on top, designed to stop people from moving from one side of a city to the other.",
"A barrier designed to prevent people from fleeing the Soviet-occupied East Germany. It wasn't just a wall, but included fences, guard towers and minefields. \n\nIf you find it odd that a worker's utopia should have to prevent their citizens from trying to escape, you aren't the only one.",
"Long answer here: After World War II, the Allies (Britain, France, and the US) and Russia split responsibility for land they retook from Germany. Russia had responsibility for the countries it had taken, and the same for the Allies. The Allies let the countries conquered by Germany go be their own countries; Russia claimed theirs into the USSR. Germany was divided in the middle of the country into East and West Germany, and the dividing line went through the middle of Berlin. Well, when you have a big city on the border and two countries who are liking each other less and less, you get spies going back and forth through that city. Also, as Soviet rule made people in East Germany poorer and poorer, they looked across, saw West Germany growing richer, and often they just... walked across into West Germany and lived there instead. The Soviet Union, faced with losing so many people across the border, eventually built a giant wall so that no one in East Berlin could see how well-off West Berlin was becoming and try to leave. A lot of people still tried to cross the wall, though, so it wasn't a great idea. Because of the spy thing, though, the Allies were OK with having the wall instead of a war, at least for a while."
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4u0ig9 | how can a company like solarcity make a profit with their current strategy (i.e. no upfront costs to the customer for equipment that is worth $20-30k)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u0ig9/eli5_how_can_a_company_like_solarcity_make_a/ | {
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"same way that a bank can profit when they give you $200k for a house. you're making interest payments on the property. if you don't pay, they'll take the property back and it'll still be worth more than what you owe. "
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1sy8lh | why is las vegas the only place someone can place a sports bet, despite the fact there are casinos all over the united states? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sy8lh/eli5_why_is_las_vegas_the_only_place_someone_can/ | {
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"It's not. You can make sports bets anywhere in the state of nevada as well as jersey and delaware"
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11p8xa | If I smell something, does that mean I'm taking the smell away? | If were to smell a fresh baked loaf of bread, or someone's perfume, would that mean there would be less fragrance for someone else to smell? Would the scent become weaker until there was none left? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11p8xa/if_i_smell_something_does_that_mean_im_taking_the/ | {
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"Well, smell is basically molecules in the air that you breathe in and the receptors in your nose register. Theoretically your argument is valid, as in, when you smell something, you've taken in some of those molecules and less will be in the air. However, that is without taking into consideration that while smelling, more of those molecules are being produced by the object, thus counteracting the part where you take away the molecules in the air.",
"This is the basis of a filtering system, to vastly expand the volume of air in question, if you had a fan pulling the room air through a carbon filter, the carbon will absorb the molecules in the air producing the odor, and reduce the overall amount in the room, much like your nose would, on a much smaller scale.\n\nSo, yes, but in the case of your nose, not very much at all. ",
"To set off your sense of smell only takes a few thousand molecules of an odor or fragrance. A loaf of bread or someone's perfume are giving off literally trillions of individual molecules, and refreshing the output of those molecules every second. Your inhaling a few of those molecules is not going to deplete but a minuscule percentage, in effect, having a meaningless depletion of the total. \n\nSo go ahead, and sniff that baked bread.",
"As others have said, technically yes, but those same molocules are drifting about in the air and getting dispersed anyway under most conditions. So any limited volume of scent is going to dissipate at about the same speed whether or not some one is standing in the room sniffing. ",
"Not really, at least not to any greater extent than if the scent molecules absorb to other surfaces. Ligand binding to receptors in the vast majority of cases is a reversible event, with the ration of bound/unbound being related to the affinity of that pair. It binds, it comes back off, another binds again over and over again. \n\nOf course, I'm not accounting for it being absorbed into nasal mucous and being washed away or some skin enzyme breaking it up, then maybe. But strictly through the sense of smelling it, you do nothing to its amount."
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5he94v | how do millionaires and billionaires avoid the death tax to pass down their wealth through generations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5he94v/eli5how_do_millionaires_and_billionaires_avoid/ | {
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"First of all, the estate tax isn't 100%. It's not like the government takes everything. The rates are pretty comparable to normal income tax right now- it maxes out at about 40%, so the majority of the estate will still go to the kids.\n\nSecond, there is no tax on the first $5 million of the estate, so right away you can give your kids a few million that will not disappear. \n\nThird, once you have enough money, you can just make more money from growth on that money rather than having to work. It doesn't matter that much if your kids can only inherit $100 million instead of $200 million, because if they get 5% returns on their investments, they can still spend $2 million a year and still have $200 million in the bank by the time they die and pass that money on to their kids. Sure, that's not \"trashing Ferraris for fun\" amounts of money, but it is \"partying instead of having a real job\" money. ",
"First, estate tax is only about 40%. So a multibillionaire is still passing down billions, even if they paid the tax from their estate. Second, there are ways to transfer and allocate assets so that they aren't taxable as part of the estate. One method is to heavily invest in life insurance which then pays out more than the estate tax owed. This way the tax is covered and the estate goes to the children. Ownership can also be passed on in life to avoid estate taxes. Someone who owns a family business can make their heirs the owner long before they die and simply work for the company, or even receive a pension. ",
"An easy way for even low millionaire's is to gift extensively throughout a lifetime. There are limits to how large gifts can be without taxation. But it easy for millionaires to form clubs. EVeryone in the club can do matching gifts. You can gift to as many people as you want. If you gift to your children and to the children of ten friends you can pass on a lot of wealth in a few years. Your friends do the same. Your children receive ten times the gift limit as their children do.\n\nChildren of the wealthy will continue to have a huge advantage over children of the poor. ",
"There's an entire industry built around avoiding the federal estate tax. That industry uses a variety of legal schemes, including trusts, LLCs, structured giving, etc.... The idea is basically \"If you're rich, you can afford very smart lawyers.\"\n\nIn fact, that's one of the problems with the estate tax: there's no net economic benefit to all those lawyers. There's an argument that the US economy would be better off if we didn't have an estate tax. That would allow those rich people to put the money into something productive rather than spending it on lawyers. Or, an alternate formulation of the same thing: those lawyers would have to find something productive to do .",
"Edit: Superior answer here. _URL_1_\n\nI mistakenly said some strategies designed to simplify the probate process were also intended to avoid the estate tax. They are not. I think the gist of my comment remains true but the other user has a more informed post than mine. \n\nHi OP, most of the answers here have not been terribly helpful but instead tried to educate you on some assumed incorrect assumptions. \n\nThe most important thing to know is that the estate tax is only able to get to money or things of value that pass through your estate. So, you want to start removing assets from your estate as soon as you start getting rich. In many ways, non-wealthy take advantage of this as well. When you set up a checking account you can designate a POD. This amount is immediately transferred to your designated beneficiary ~~and does not count as part of the estate.~~ This can be done (and should be done) for all retirement accounts such as IRAs, 401k's and so on. This applies to a ton of the liquid wealth of the wealthy. \n\nEDIT: POD is part of the estate. I was incorrect. Please see this comment, _URL_0_, POD simplifies probate, but does not effect the size of the estate. \n\nSecond there are more sophisticated techniques to minimize assets and/or remove them from the estate. A very common way is to establish a family limited partnership. You transfer the assets in to the FLP early on and as they gain wealth the wealth is transferred to the beneficiaries in several ways, including distributions or ownership in new acquisitions. A FLP is not an estate asset, but the ownership interest in the FLP can be. So through smart planning you reduce it so your ownership in the FLP decreases over your life until you only own a nominal amount at death. FLP's have some controversy, but on the whole they work. Also extremely common is trusts, whether revocable or irrevocable. You deed your property into a trust for the benefit of your heirs. The gains to your heirs are only taxed when removed and we can start a whole new thread on that topic. \n\nAnother way is to hide your money. Take it overseas and out of the reach of the government. You can do this with offshore accounts. Or you can use clever (or illegal) accounting to hide the true ownership of assets. \n\nYou can also make a charitable donations at death. This is very common because rich people want to see their legacy continued. But, this can also be abused by making the charity your charity and abusing it so that it is essentially a piggy bank that can accept tax exempt donations and then be distributed to friends and family as salary, can make donations itself to other charities (owned and controlled by friends and family, of course) and so. For examples of charity abuse look no further than our two candidates for President in 2016. Consider this before blindly honoring the Buffett and Gates \"donations.\" Charities are abused by the wealthy and an area in need of reform, but don't expect it. \n\nIn sum, there are dozens of ways to skin that cat. I have given you the three most common, remove assets from the estate, hide the money or donate it. There are many more and many people make millions of dollars and save billions of dollars creating clever solutions to this question. But overall the general idea is to reduce taxable assets in your estate as that is what is taxed. So as a wealthy person you want to die with no more than 5 million in your \"estate.\" ",
"As others have said, the death tax is currently at 40% and not all estates are taxed at this level or even taxed at all. This year the exclusion amount was $5.45M ($10.9M for married couples) so estates of this size or smaller will not be taxed. \n\nIf your estate is larger than this then one major way you can avoid the death tax is to start reducing your wealth before you actually die. I'm fortunate enough that my parents did well in life so I receieve a couple trust accounts every year, which is done to reduce my parents wealth. I'm only taxed on interest earned on the trust fund. This prevents their money from being taxed again by the death tax at a later date. There are also ways to gift items/property before death which can avoid the death tax. The annual gift exemption is the most common, currently you can \"gift\" $14,000 to as many people as you would like every year. So in addition to giving your kids trusts you can give every family member $14,000 every year which is tax free. It isn't much but it can add up if you give it to all your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc. (there are some exceptions to the rule for people under 23 though).\n\n\n",
"So *your* question is about estate tax avoidance. A well planned estate will begin moving assets out as quickly as possible (well before death) and often during a persons lifetime and by targeting assets they think have the best *growth* in the future. This is a super quick and dirty answer, keep in mind there are tons of technical details underpinning these. \n\nBasic estate planning:\n\n1) Each year the annual exclusion for gifts is 14K (indexed for inflation). A taxpayer can give 14K to as many people as they want. So husband and wife *together* can give 28K to each child, grandchild and great-grandchild. Doesnt sound like much but it can add up over time. \n\n2) Also excluded on top of annual gift tax exclusion is gifts for education so long as the payment is made directly to the school. Grandchild got into a big name school, often grandpa and grandma (assuming they are the ones with the estate) will gladly write that check. \n\n3) Also excluded on top of annual gift tax exclusion is gifts of medical. Rare, but if that grandchild has some expensive medical need, grandma and grandpa write that check to the provider.\n\n4) when all that is done each taxpayer has ~$5.4M of lifetime exemption. So grandma and grandpa combined have ~10.8M to pass down stream before they are subject to gift/estate tax.\n\nOkay, but what about 100M+, /u/w33tad1d, these numbers you tossed out don't come close to that.\n\nAdvanced estate planning (all the sexy stuff....), transactions and more transactions\n\n1) Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT), you can design the GRAT to that the donor puts assets into the GRAT and takes back an annuity plus interest. Properly designed you will have a calculated gift of zero (thank you Waltons for that great tax case). Now, if the assets grow over the period *faster* than the required interest rate, the excess goes downstream to kids. If it doesn't, then you get back everything and only lost out on professional fees. Typically you want a SHORT timeline. This is basically an \"option.\" What do you put in the GRAT, something you think is going to blow up in a short timeline. Got that family business or per-IPO stock, toss it in a GRAT.\n\n2) Installment Sales to Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts. You gift ~10% of the value of assets you want to sell. You sell assets to a Grantor Trust in exchange for the down payment (that gift of 10%) and a note for the rest. Interest only with a balloon at the end. Ideally the assets generate cash flow and they will pay off the note during the term. You want a LONG timeline. What a deal I sell a thing to a trust for my kids, it pays for itself and my kids get to keep it. The downside, if it doesnt work out, i gave a gift of that 10% and i lose out on that amount of lifetime exemption.\n\n3) Value of assets. Any transaction I have to value the assets. Stock and bonds are easy to value. What about that closely held family business. What is it worth? Well, we need to find out so we have a guy to value it. I dont move the whole thing, I move a minority interest, say 20%. Oh, yea its not worth as much in my kids hands since they only own 20% and mom and dad owns the other 80%. Kids cant control the entity. Worse yet, the agreement for the entity says that they cant sell it without majority agreement. See I got this *terrible* thing, i cant sell it and i cant make decisions. Ewww, when we value it we will take a discount for lack of marketability and lack of control. whats that look like, say 30%. Nice, when I sell it to my kids its worth 30% less. ;-) You can even do this with a Family Limited Partnership if you hold stocks and bonds. Drop them into an FLP and now you have an entity you can \"value,\" kids get 40% of the FLP, lack of marketability and lack of control, so now that FLP interest is worth less. \n\n4) Grantor Trusts. These a particular type of trust, in which the income is taxed to the grantor. So Dad gives $1M to a grantor trust for his daughter. Say it makes 5%, that means Dad gets taxed on income of $50K, which would be ~20K of tax. So? Dad just constructively gifted the trust $20K to pay the tax all without it ever hitting his lifetime exclusion.\n\nReally there is no magic bullet. Its about planning for what the family holds and combining transactions to maximize what you gift through the life time exclusion of ~$5.4M. You could give cash of that amount or you can hire a good estate planner and you could use some sexy advanced techniques to push **much** more down to your descendants. \n\n",
"It was touched briefly, but life insurance is really a great way to duck estate taxes.\n\nFor example, a single premium life insurance. Instead of it being a policy that you pay into over time, you pay in once (single premium) up front. That is then, essentially, an investment vehicle earning you more than inflation and hopefully more.\n\nWhen you die, the insurance policy pays out to your beneficiaries.\n\nLife Insurance is exempt from federal taxes.",
"In many countries you pass your properties to your sons while you are alive then put a clause where you keep control of everything while you are alive.",
"Best way is to be Swedish. No death/inheritance tax in Sweden (nor property tax or gift tax for that matter).",
"your use of the oligarch's propaganda \"death tax\" leads me to comment that an estate tax is the one tax that nearly all the founders of our republic would have supported. One of the strongest motivations of founders was to avoid the European/UK model of family privilege.\n\n\nBTW the small business owners,farmers etc that are always trotted out as examples of the estate tax being unfair virtually all avoid the tax by buying life insurance that pays the tax",
"People have mentioned a significant amount of estate tax techniques but Life Insurance is an huge one that millionaires and billionaires use to mitigate or all together cover their estate tax. its essentially an low cost investment that will pay out income tax free and estate tax free if owned correctly (in a trust - more specifically an ILIT). Its an incredibly versatile asset. for example, a lot of hedge fund managers have recently been using a product called PPLI or Private Placement Life Insurance as a tax wrapper (estate and income tax). This product will put a portion of the premiums (a little more complicated than that but to simplify it) paid in into any hedge fund the insured chooses (except one they have control over) effectively shielding huge potential gains from estate tax and income tax when it pays out. It really doesn't take much to completely avoid estate tax if you choose to get creative with it.\n\nThere's also creative ways to avoid paying income tax on premiums paid into the trust through a split dollar arrangement where you \"loan\" premiums into the trust and then pay the note/interest on that loan which is calculated in one of two ways, economic benefit or AFR, both of which can be hundreds of dollars on an 300k premium. These techniques are pretty outragous",
"\"Son, here's a bank account number. It's in Switzerland, don't tell anybody or else they'll tax your ass. Here's Gunters number, he's a good friend and chairman of said Swiss bank, he'll help you in any financial matters. Good luck son, I'm going to meet the big banker in the sky....aargh...\"",
"If anybody out there needs some help getting below that $5M mark, my account is available for deposits.",
"Live in a place where there is no such tax.\n\nEach tax is locked to a single nation and can not be applied outside that nation.",
"Not sure about the US, but in Canada most people with lots of money who intend for their family to inherit start something called a \"family trust\" and put all their assets as they acquire them, including bank accounts and property holdings, in the name of the trust. \n\nThen, when they kick, operation of the trust continues with the next in line, all assets and incomes go into there and the family shares the wealth.\n\nthere are all sorts of other tricks as well that they use for their personal assets that aren't in the trust for whatever reason, but this is the easiest and most effective. \n",
"The ELI5 answer is; they don't. They pass down $5-10 million tax-free, and have to pay taxes on the rest. The rest can be kept in businesses or trusts that the heirs don't technically own, so they are taxed only when they take the money out to use it.",
"Lots of detailed answers here so I'll give the more ELI5 version I've gathered based off reading said detailed responses:\n\nLoopholes. ",
"Assume a 50% estate tax (not death tax - that's a silly term for silly people).\n\nAssume you inherit $100M at age 50, and you live til 80.\n\nAssume you earn a good real return of 5.3% (stock market has historically paid 6.5%) paying 25% tax on dividends and cap gains, making a real income of 4% a year.\n\nAfter you reach the age of 80 and die, your $100M will have grown to $320 million in real terms. The government will take $160M (50% tax), leaving your heirs with $160M, more than what you inherited. Even if you spent $60M over your 30 year hold on the money, 100% of your wealth would reach your heirs, without any fancy accounting tricks.\n\nNote how inefficient this is: the money is inherited every 30 years. If we skip generations, we can accumulate longer before taking the 50% hit. Eg if a 20 year old inherits from grandpa and dies at 80, he has 60 years of accumulation before losing half to tax, giving him $1B instead of $320M at time of death, meaning his heirs get $500M. Or he could have spent $400M during his life, and still pass on exactly what he inherited.\n\nSo that even if the tax is fully paid, using no trusts or other chicanery, wealth can survive and grow, assuming relatively return on capital.\n\n ",
"There is no such thing as a death tax. There is an estate tax, which effects only the wealthy and ought to be higher and better enforced.",
"In the UK farmland is widely used to avoid death duties. Mr Dyson (the hoover guy) has been the largest purchaser of late - making the price of farm land artificially high.",
"So there are some good answers here, but most wealthy people hold tbeir wealth in assets such as real estate and stock. Bill gates owns Cascade which primarily builds and buys Apts. Warren buffet owns trailer parks through Berkshire Hathaway. \n\n\nWithout going in to to much detail, the company is in a trust with another company as the trustee and the owners of said company are other trustees and other companies. The object of a trust, if set up properly is to keep the money from being income. Why? Bc only \"income events\" are taxable. And, if set up properly, a trust and entities (LLC,LP,INC) can legally avoid \"Income Events\". You make $100 and the governemnt takes 30-40% or $30. A company(LLC, LP,INC) makes $100 and can claim through several avenues a loss(depreciation being a great one on property) of $90, then they pay 30-40% tax on $10, so $3.\n\nEven if you have low bet worth you should use a trust to protect you and your family from taxable events. ",
"I know this isn't really answering your question, but it's worth pointing out that the phrase \"death tax\" was invented by opponents of the legislation.\n\nThe correct name is Estate Tax. Death Tax implies that it is a tax rendered for dying, and also implies that this tax applies to many more people than it actually does.\n\nThe Estate Tax is designed to tax extremely wealthy people only.",
"ughhhhhhhh. Quit with your \"death tax.\" There is no death tax. The claim that the estate tax is best characterized as a \"death tax\" is a myth, and only the richest 0.14% of estates actually owe the tax. The term \"death tax\" is a deliberate and carefully calculated neologism used as a propaganda tactic to aid in efforts to repeal estate taxes. ",
"In my country, not only millionaires but a lot of moderately wealthy people \"gift\" their assets and money to younger family members while they are alive. You have to pay taxes but they are less and it doesn't take time",
"My family moved to a place where there is no inheritance tax. \n\nFrom the UK where inheritance tax goes up to 40%"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5he94v/eli5how_do_millionaires_and_billionaires_avoid/dazouhd/?st=iwi77m9t&sh=f9ebaac4",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5he94v/eli5how_do_millionaires_and_billionaires_avoid/dazp9wj/?st=iwi7ucv0&sh=c... |
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