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5w67ip | what does it mean when people say certain types of cars have oversteer or understeer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w67ip/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_people_say_certain/ | {
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"Oversteer is when the back tyres loses grip. \n\nThis is usually wanted in racing as the back tyres are constantly spinning while you're turning and so that you don't lose too much speed while in a turn and letting you exit while still at a constant speed. Pretty much what drifting is.\n\nUndersteer basically is when the front tyres loses grip; basically even though your front wheels are turned, you're still heading for that brick wall in front of you.\n\nCars have different ways of delivering power for different purposes. Most family cars will deliver the power to the front as it would leave more room for passengers. Many higher end performance cars will have power on the rear wheels and most all terrain vehicles will have four wheel drive (power is delivered to all four wheels) and all wheel drives due to unstable surfaces. \n\nWhen greater power is delivered to the rear (rear wheel drive) than they can grip, they will spin out in which is taken advantage off in certain situations for reasons as explained above. \n\n",
"*Under* is when a car is heading towards a corner, turns the wheels but carries on in a predominantly straight line.\n\n*Over* is when a car, in the same scenario, has the rear of the car slide out of line more than required to make the corner.\n\nBoth are primarily caused by speed, travelling too fast for the corner being attempted. Which way a car goes *usually* depends on which set of wheels are powered.\n\nFront Wheel Drive cars have to pull the vehicle along and turn it around corners using the same set of wheels. Which lends itself to *under* steer.\n\nRear Wheel Drive cars tend to *over* steer the power being put down at the back can't be matched by the front wheels getting it around the corner.",
"It's easiest to understand oversteer and understeer by thinking about how a car car steers through a corner. So cars steer with their front two wheels, and basically have the rest of the car follow into the arc of the turn. Understeer and oversteer is what happens when one side of the car loses grip in a turn.\n\nWhen a car is understeering, this means that the car is not turning as much as it is expected to turn. This happens because the front wheels lose grip, and since the front wheels are doing turning, the car doesn't turn as much as it should.\n\nIn an oversteering car, the car turns too much, since this time it is the rear wheels that lose grip, causing the back of the car to slide out through the turn.\n\nCars that send power to the rear wheels are more likely to oversteer, since rear traction can more easily be broken because the rear wheels are being fed power. The opposite is true for front wheel cars.",
"I have worked on cars for a long time and I think of it this way, when your cars oversteers it turns more than you expected it. When it understeers it turns less than you expected it to. Most drivers can somewhat correct for understeer, most drivers cannot correct for oversteer. Make sure your best tires tires are on the rear of your vehicle to help minimize the possibility of oversteer."
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6zxxoz | why are many americans so hostile towards higher taxes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zxxoz/eli5_why_are_many_americans_so_hostile_towards/ | {
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"We don't think our government use the money wisely, we think that government does things inefficiently, we don't want to pay for peoples' bad choices, and in any case, we believe that taxes at the state and local level are more responsive to citizens' needs than taxes at the national level.\n\nSweden has 10 million people, do you think your government would do as good a job of responding to *city and local* needs if Sweden had 325 million people?",
"Have you seen our government?",
"Americans tend to think of taxes as taken from them and given to someone else instead of being taken from everyone and used to benefit society. ",
"Americans (as a group, there are plenty who think differently) don't trust government to provide better services than they can buy with the money in their pocket. They look at bad schools and bad government-run hospitals and think that government is incapable of providing high-value care for everyone.\n\nThey percieve a large population who will cheat the system, living the easy life while the responsible people in society foot the bill.\n\nMoney also has a larger say in politics in the USA. Monied interests hold a lot of sway over politicians and they are free to buy propaganda to spread information opposing increasing taxes, particularly on the wealthy."
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8jpgg5 | as someone who has an anxiety disorder (hypochondria) and has had every test (2 ekgs, 2 cbcs, d dimer, troponin, chest x-ray, holter monitor, echocardiogram) why is it that i feel the physical symptoms of anxiety even though i don’t feel anxious? meaning things like chest tightness , etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8jpgg5/eli5_as_someone_who_has_an_anxiety_disorder/ | {
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"Honestly it's likely just in your head then, certain psychogenic effects can happen in some situations (such as having hypochondria). I'd honestly suggest talking with a psychologist about it and seeing if they have any options or can at least point you in the right direction of who to talk to; they'll certainly be more helpful than random people on an \"explain complex things to laymen\" subreddit.",
"This is probably a better question for r/askscience. \n\nBut I'll give it a whirl. I'm a Neural Network Programmer, not a scientist per say, so I'm going to take my best shot. Neurons in the brain have fluid states between very little signal and full signal. Many factors can affect them physically such that it's not simply behavioural psychology, it's an imbalance that is often a runaway effect in which what the neurons are doing may affect the chemical outlook of the brain, which in turn may affect what the neurons are doing. So my understanding of what happens in anxiety and depression patients is that there are a few areas of the brain that get very highly trained. They can either suck up all the serotonin, norepinephrine, both, or sometimes other affective hormones or regulators of the brain. That's why you see depressive and anxious brains that are [highly active in a couple areas but inactive in others.](_URL_0_) \n\nSSRIs and SNRIs are often prescribed to people with depression anxiety disorders of all sorts. They prevent the re-uptake of Serotonin and Norepinephrine respectively. What that means is they prevent those highly active areas of the brain from sucking up too much of the affective regulators of the brain. This, in turn, leaves enough for the rest of the brain. Since both promote regular activity, what's often happening in the brain of anxious or depressed people is that some part of the brain that handles emotions, fears, specific situations, rationalizing, etc is not active enough and thoughts can persevere instead of getting handled. Since behaviourly this can have a lasting effect even after the reuptake is addressed (in a sense, even now that the hardware is working, the software that was made when it was not working properly has to be addressed) most doctors will prescribe therapy as well to get the behaviour of how one thinks about things back to normal.\n\nChest tightness, dryness of mouth, headaches, shaking, sweating, feeling light headed. . . are symptomatic of anxiety. It's just one's brain telling the body to get ready to respond to a dangerous stimulus. In hypochondria and most types of anxiety disorders, the danger is being vastly overestimated by one's brain and the areas that handle it are both underactive as well as undertrained (since they have been underactive and the host doesn't have time on the clock thinking about it in a healthy way).\n\nHaving dealt with depression and anxiety myself, and hypochondria playing role in it, as well as some other more predominant social anxieties, in my particular case medication has helped a great deal. Once the medication was adjusted for dose, I found myself waking up 4-5 months after I started and just not giving a f@#$ about things that used to pain me drastically. That was just an amazing feeling! Seeing someone to go over thought processes has really opened my eyes to what was affected by it, and allowed me to slowly chip away at some of those behaviors, with lots of success.\n\nSo to summarize answer your question. . . if it's anxiety disorder causing the physical symptoms of anxiety, even if you don't feel anxious per say, it's because of the nature of how anxiety is related to the governing regulators of the brain and the effect they can have on the activity of the rest of the brain, including maximizing or minimizing the parts of your brain which control the physical responses of your body, even if you're processing perfectly socially.\n\nGreat question, best of luck with your journey!"
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8bwzqt | why do objects feel lighter when they're lifted higher up? | For example, it's easier carry a heavy box while you're holding on your head rather than at chest level. Also when you go camping you place all your heaviest objects at the top of the bag. Why does placing objects higher up cause them to feel lighter, or make them easier to carry? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bwzqt/eli5_why_do_objects_feel_lighter_when_theyre/ | {
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"If you are carrying the box by placing it *on* your head, then you are using more muscles and bones to support the object than if you are simply holding it with your hands. Furthermore, you are supporting the object closer to its center of mass, meaning there is less gravitational forces trying to twist it out of your grip.\n\nYou pack large camping backpacks with heavy stuff on top for much the same reason. Leaning forward, those heavy objects become situated above your spine and hips, allowing your whole body to shoulder the weight. If you packed the heavy stuff low, then more weight would be behind you, pulling your shoulders back and unbalancing you.\n\nIn short, it's not that the objects are lighter, it's that the weight is more evenly distributed.",
"It isn't the height but the distance out from your centre of mass, on your head they are directly above your centre of mass, on your chest they are slightly forward. This means you have to expend extra energy leaning back to balance when carried on your chest as well as the lifting force. It is also easier to lean forward than back so weights are easier to carry on your back than front. ",
"It's all about the point of balance where you stand and how many and how strong muscles you need to use to achieve the center of balance. \n\nYou are naturally standing on one place and you center of gravity is roughly at your heels. This makes your heels the center of the gravity. you can try this out in a way that you can lift your toes up from the ground without adjusting (much) your position, but you cant lift your heels without leaning forward. \n\nNow when you take an object eg. to your right hand, the object shifts your balance if you dont compensate with your muscles. Eg. picking up feather means that you dont need to do any to very very little compensation with muscles to keep the balance. When you take 20 kg weight, the story is different. \n\nNow when you start to lift the weight, wether you do it with one arm, two arms or with your whole body, the route of the weight means how much you need to compensate (do muscle work). \n\nIf you lift the weight close to your body, it is easier for you to lift it and keep your balance. Thus using less muscles to do the work. Now if you lift the weight from ground with straight arms, you have very few muscles that supports to that lifting. \n\nThus it appears that the object is lighter when lifted high up, but the \"high up\" is not the actual question here. It is all about balance, distance from ground and how many muscles are there to support, and also how strong your lifting muscles are. ",
"Center of mass. The further away from your c.o.m the more effort it's gonna take more effort to lift because the weight is trying to topple you over. Usually a person's center of mass is gonna be around the chest area. Ideally if you could lodge the weight there that would be even easier but realistically overhead is your next best bet. ",
"In addition to the center-of-mass answers, you use different muscles for holding heavy boxes in different positions. Some positions will just naturally be more comfortable because they use larger muscle groups which in turn makes it easier to carry heavier loads. As the extreme example; carrying the same amount of weight purely with your biceps will be difficult while the extra weight on your quadriceps (front upper thigh) muscles can be trivial.",
"The further an object is from Earth, the less his gravitational pull affects it... But it probably doesn't apply on such a small scale."
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2kalw0 | how can higher educational institutions justify requiring higher test scores and gpas from asian applicants. | There is a debate going on about affirmative action and whether it too much favors African Americans. I don't agree with it, but at least there is reasoning behind that. African Americans were subject to social and economic oppression for decades.
Now Asian immigrants may not have been subject to the same circumstances as African Americans, but they certainly weren't favored by the American system either.
How can schools justify higher requirements for Asian applicants? Isn't this racism? Shouldn't people he judged by their capability and not by the color of their skin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kalw0/eli5_how_can_higher_educational_institutions/ | {
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"This is what it's like when affirmative action harms a group you're part of. Because your overall metrics are higher, to maintain equitable race ratios, more is required of your ethnic group."
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fk1za9 | how will the us economy not completely collapse with everything being shut down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fk1za9/eli5_how_will_the_us_economy_not_completely/ | {
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"You are very likely underestimating human resilience and persistence. Although many factors go into making a business, the human element is a big one. It is more than likely that things take awhile to recover but there is no real reason for it not to. People still need to eat, want entertainment, need shelter, study, work, - kind of lead a normal life. \n\nEconomics isn't about something separate from human needs and actions. The ideas of economics are not bound to \"money\" - it is bound to human wants and the ability to meet them.",
"Big business will get bailouts. Small businesses will eat their savings, and go bankrupt. But since governments do not care about small businesses, they view it as success because it clears the path for big business to take over. Since big business is too big to fail, or at least too big to let fail. As in big enough for a bailout.\n\nThat is partially a cynical joke, but thats how it works.\n\nBut no one knows what is going to happen. No amount if bailout will save a company if the economy around it is in shambles, or it's suppliers and contractors have failed.\n\nNow you shouldn't just think about US economy, you also have consider economy of your trading partners. You can bail out a factory, but if no one is buying the product then that hardly matters.",
"Think of a big pile of leaves in autumn. This is the economy and each little leaf is a business. The wind is the market forces that sometimes blows more leaves into the pile or blows leaves away. \n\nEvery once in a while a big gust comes along and destroys the pile. That's the economy collapsing. Some leaves are blown right out of the park, others linger around. But there will always be new leaves falling from trees, and after a while a new pile will form by itself. A gardener may even come in to rake the leaves together into piles. In this case, the gardener would be the government stimulating it's economy."
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tjkh9 | this chart about jpmorgan chase's recent $2 billion loss | _URL_0_
Why did JP Morgan hedge both ways? Why was it cornered once it did? I don't understand this at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tjkh9/eli5_this_chart_about_jpmorgan_chases_recent_2/ | {
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"Pure speculation: Looks like JP Morgan just straight fucked up. They had bought corporate debt (makes sense), then bought insurance on that debt (make some sense), then bought more corporate debt in case the insurance didn't pay (uh...), then bought insurance on that (hey, wait a min~), repeat until all your money is being lost to other companies.",
"I came to r/ELI5 just to see if this chart had been posted because I don't get it."
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1xeurj | how do soaps made out of tallow clean the body rather than just make it greasy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xeurj/eli5_how_do_soaps_made_out_of_tallow_clean_the/ | {
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"Soaps are *salts* of fats, not fats themselves (This means they are formed by a combination of fat with an ionic substance - very ELI5 here) . \n\nThe fat provides the water-repelling part while the ionic part provides the water-attracting part. Both these are necessary.\n\nThis new substance (soap) separates the oil from the body."
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2qtvle | what makes things colored? why is a blue flower blue? | Why are things different colors? What makes a blue flower look blue to us and what makes a red flower red? What is in something that makes it that color? Why do our eyes see that color? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qtvle/eli5_what_makes_things_colored_why_is_a_blue/ | {
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"What you're really asking is two different questions I think: what physically makes color and what psychologically makes color.\n\nPhysically, color is the wavelength of light that is reflected by a surface. So if light hits a blue flower, the flower is absorbing all the wavelengths of light except blue, which it reflects. White objects reflect all wavelengths and black objects absorb all wavelengths. This is why black cars get hotter in the sun than white cars.\n\nPsychologically, your brain interprets specific wavelengths of light as color. We will probably never be able to know if your subjective experience of color is the same as mine. We can know that we're both looking at light with a wavelength of 475 nm, but we can't know whether the \"blue\" you see from that is the same \"blue\". \n\nAs a side note, there's a lot of philosophical discussion about whether physical knowledge about something is separate from knowledge about its subjective effects. If that interests you, look up \"Mary's Room\" and \"qualia\" for a well-known thought experiment about the topic."
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6k2exl | why is internet explorer so much slower than the other browsers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6k2exl/eli5_why_is_internet_explorer_so_much_slower_than/ | {
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"It's not as true as it once was since they revamped it and rebranded it as Microsoft Edge, who some people kind of like now.\n\nStill, it used to be slower since it was of older design. The original Internet Explorer was released in 1995, whereas more modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome were released in 2004 and 2008 respectively. \n\nWhile I'm sure that Internet Explorer's code was revamped many times, it's now \"ancient\" origins effectively meant that new browser features (complex image formats, videos, flash, more recent versions of HTML, etc.) were mostly only tacked on the already existing code, whereas browsers like Firefox and Chrome had them integrated (and most importantly, optimized) from the start.\n\n[A lot has changed since the birth of the web, and many browsers were less lucky than IE and kicked the bucked along the road](_URL_0_); in a way it's a surprise IE (in its rebranded form) is still kickin'.",
"I will agree with /r/moujaune on many points, but expound on others.\n\n1. Microsoft has never focused on excellence in design, especially in their early history. Most of their products were \"good enough\" but they never really invested in producing \"the best\". Instead, through aggressive marketing and morally reprehensible (but technically legal) means they would pound competitors out of the market: Netscape is a famous example, but also Lotus, WordPerfect, etc.\n\n2. Microsoft also ignored standards as they were created around the web. Their early versions of IE were buggy and broken as far as most standards were concerned, and they were very slow to change this. Why would they do this? Presumably because they thought if they had an MS-only compatible version of things, you'd have to use their products for convenience's sake. In response, web designers usually created pages that were for IE only, just to support their non-conformist designs.\n\n3. One place where Microsoft has been very good at is: backwards compatibility. They do this by keeping decision points in their code that detects old formats or scenarios (such as Word 1.0 documents) and then they jump to use the old code appropriately. This is why you can still run many if not most DOS programs on Windows today. However, this leads to extra code being maintained and compiled into their products, including all their crappy non-conformist versions. This extra code also means slower load times, slower run times, and slower render times for IE.\n\n4. So Microsoft (as I understand it) made a break with the Edge browser. It gets rid of a lot of that legacy stuff and uses a new rendering engine that is focused on standards and competitor pain-points like rendering times and power usage. In other words, they have been dragged kicking and screaming into making something modern, because they realized and finally responded to the market that was kicking their ass.\n\nIf it sounds like I am anti-Microsoft, I mostly am. Their history is full of anti-consumer and anti-nice behaviors and sentiment, like the \"IE can't be removed from the operating system!\" crap. However, under their current CEO they have realized they can't control the market any more and instead it has gone around them to leave them behind. They now have many more very good and market-driven products like Surface tablet/notebooks and Windows 10, and are actually trying to innovate and move away from the upgrade treadmill model of revenue. The Edge browser is a direct result of that new mindset.\n\nWhen they move away from the \"me too!\" approach of their product development, like Bing and Zune and MSN, and stop trying to lock people into their stuff, I'll give them more kudos then too.\n\n*Edit: clarification, correction*",
"It is not that bad these days. I find it faster sometimes because my other browsers gets bogged down with saved tabs. I use it to watch porn since it has a pretty good video preview and because no one will think to look at the history there."
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497wie | how do illegal immigrants get into the us? | What paths do illegal immigrants mostly take to get into the US? Also, what prevents a mexican citizen from just taking a flight into the US? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/497wie/eli5_how_do_illegal_immigrants_get_into_the_us/ | {
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"Mostly they walk across the southern border with Mexico. it's very long, most of it is just open desert, and it's very hard to secure.\n\nTaking a plane into the US requires a passport, so they can't do it that way without fraud.",
"Some enter illegally, by crossing the border or sneaking in on container ships. \n\nOthers enter legally then stay past what their visa allows j ",
"* they sneak across the large, sparsely populated borders between Mexico or Canada\n* they get tourist or student visas to get in, and simply never leave\n\n > Also, what prevents a mexican citizen from just taking a flight into the US?\n\n* airlines typically check for visas before they will let you board an international flight\n* when you land in the US, you will be at a special controlled area of the airport, and be required to pass through an immigration checkpoint and provide them with your authorization to enter the country",
"Oh you sweet summer child...\n\nIf you are coming from a country that is poor and brown then you cannot just grab your passport and fly to another country. You need a visa. To get a visa you have to apply at the embassy of the country you are interested in visiting. Let's assume you're going to the US from the Dominican Republic as that's where I have direct experience.\n\nApplying for the visa costs $100 in a country where the average monthly wage is $400. You do not get this money back. You then have to provide fingerprints, get tests done and generally prove that you've got so much invested in your home in the DR that you won't simply enter into America and stay. If you have any friends or family already living in the US there is basically no chance that you'll be granted a tourist visa as they automatically assume that you'll just shack up with your relatives and never come home.\n\nOnce you've done all this they stamp \"DENIED\" on your visa, keep your $100 and tell you that you're free to try again later."
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2lavws | why doesn't our brain allow us to play chess with ourself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lavws/eli5why_doesnt_our_brain_allow_us_to_play_chess/ | {
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"Why wouldn't it? \n\nYou can play chess with yourself, the problem is that advanced chess has a lot to do with predicting your opponent's future plays. If you are your own opponent, you generally have a very good idea of what you are going to do.\n\nIf you were to think of each move as an independent event and make your moves based on what is best for that moment, then you could easily play chess with yourself. However, you lose out on long-term planning."
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4nw6gn | what are the differences between east/west germany before the berlin wall fell and present day north/south korea that makes any kind of reunification for the koreas so worrisome to people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nw6gn/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_eastwest/ | {
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"Don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but the economic factor is a major component of it. West Germany was ahead of East Germany economically, and reunification was a big hit on their economy as they had to bring the East up to speed.\n\nThis gap is much, much, *much* more pronounced with North/South Korea. South Korea is a top class modernized economy, and North Korea is a near-starvation state still struggling to develop past 50's level technology. Reunification is pretty much guaranteed to put SK into a deep recession or depression.\n\nKind of related to that, there is a good chance that however reunification went, there would be some turmoil and disruption of services. NK is so close to the edge that people wouldn't be able to take it. There would probably be another famine, and the collapse of the state security infrastructure would likely lead to a massive refugee crisis. This is probably the biggest thing China's worried about, since they would be the most likely destination for those refugees.\n\nThere's also the cultural aspect. As bad as East Germany might have been with the Stazi, etc, NK is much, much worse. There have been generations of constant propaganda, and one of the most developed cults of personality in the world. You'd essentially have to deprogram the entire nation.\n\nThe unfortunate fact about NK is that while everybody dislikes the Kim regime and the current situation, there's not much real incentive for any of the major players to proactively try to do something about it, and would likely make things worse in the short and medium terms if they tried."
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5hur6u | what is the point of the 12-page personality tests employers make you take during online applications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hur6u/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_the_12page_personality/ | {
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"A lot of psychometric instruments are horseshit, IT takes a lot of work to create one that is reliable and valid. So basically it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling.",
"Who knows, but I had to do one of those once in person on this little handheld computer. The woman interviewing me said it would probably take me awhile because it was tricky to scroll around the screen to see the whole questions and answers. It took me a minute but I figured out how to zoom out and basically fix the problem. I told the woman and she seemed surprised/impressed, I thought. It was a store clerk job and I didn't get it."
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b9nwru | how do celebrities spot comments from other celebrities on ig/twitter when they probably have thousands of mentions to sort through? | If you’re getting notified thousands of times, you can’t possibly be looking at all of them to see if one of them is actually your friend... can you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9nwru/eli5_how_do_celebrities_spot_comments_from_other/ | {
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"I dunno about IG but on Twitter you can see your mentions... And there's a tab specifically to see your mentions from other blue checkmarks. ",
"Third party parsing - people use another software program to read the twitter for them, and then tell that program what tweets they want to see and how they want to deal with the twitter verse. Hootsuite is a good example of one of these programs. ",
"Verified users can filter their comments to only show other verified users. Plus Twitter has started auto-hiding \"low quality\" users from verified users, which hides most typical trolling...",
"they see their wall, the people they follow - they don't follow all those fans, but in a conversational sense I guess I see your point.. if it's a thread that is ongoing, maybe they can follow the thread somehow?",
"The notifications window has a few filter options. You can ignore people who don't follow you (for a medium celebrity who wants to interact with fans but not random people who just hop into their mentions) or only people you follow (for a big celebrity drowning in mentions who only wants to see things from people they know)."
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asm3r7 | why does your batteries performance drop if you leave it on charge while it is already fully charged? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/asm3r7/eli5_why_does_your_batteries_performance_drop_if/ | {
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"It doesn't. Not with modern batteries/chargers, anyway. The charger or the battery itself will have a circuit that prevents overvoltage/overcharging.",
"Batteries consist of two cells inside them with a wall between them that lets electrons through. Charging a battery causes electrons to move to one of the sides and be stored there until the poles are connected again. Charging a battery beyond the maximum induces extra energy to the battery and can cause chmical reactions to happen which can change the properties and degrade the quality of the components inside. ",
"A battery's capacity drops when the chemicals in a battery react together in ways that aren't undone when the battery charges or discharges. These 'side reactions' happen more when the battery is fully charged, when it is fully flat, or when it is hot. \n\nLeaving the battery fully charged for a long time does allow some of those so-called 'side reactions' happen more than would if the battery is charged, disconnected, and allowed to discharge normally. In addition, when connected to power, the device and its battery can get hotter than it would otherwise.\n\nBut, the difference is minimal, and so the convenience of just plugging it in when you go to bed and having it fully charged when you get up, is worth more to most people than the slightly better battery life from charging it most of the way before you go to sleep, unplugging it overnight, and topping it up when you wake up."
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8i7w3x | why does our species find other animals to be cuter when they are sleeping/curled up in a ball? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i7w3x/eli5_why_does_our_species_find_other_animals_to/ | {
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"To make humans more likely to protect babies, we evolved to think babies are cute. (sleeping for most of the day, big eyes, baby walk because of disproportionate arms and legs)\n\nSince our brain evolved and our bodies changed over millions of years, the brain function that does this, also tells us, some baby animals or small sleeping animals are cute. Since that wasn't too big of a problem for our ancestors, our brain works the same.",
"Animals that are sleeping/curled up in a ball seem appear less threatening in our minds. It’s same reason why baby animals tend to seem cuter to us than adult animals. You can easily manipulate this perception. For example, play an eerie track in the background and all of a sudden the same scene of a sleeping animal is decidedly less cute."
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8fffbw | why does lightning strike very precise points such as the end of a pole, yet takes a seemingly randomized zig-zag path to that point? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fffbw/eli5_why_does_lightning_strike_very_precise/ | {
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"On average, air is air. However, on a very small scale, there are pockets of low/high pressure, and low/high concentrations of all sorts of chemicals. You can see [in this incredible gif](_URL_0_) how \"tendrils\" of electricity are extended first. They travel through as low-resistance a path as they can find, and the first one that makes contact with the ground allows the massive current to flow through. \n\n[How stuff works has a great, thorough explanation](_URL_1_) on how lightning works. The third and fourth pages explain how these tendrils work.\n\nTL;dr - Lightning follows the path of least resistance.",
"Lightning takes the past of least resistance coming from the ground up, and because of the pockets of high and low pressure it zig zags as it moves towards the sky ",
"Once the voltage at the bottom of the cloud is high enough, electrons start forming an ionized path down towards the ground. On it's way down from the cloud, it starts at one point and branches out, each branch avoiding the others, because all these branches are negatively charged.\n\nOnce it gets closer to the ground, the negatively charged lightning starts pulling positive charges up towards the cloud, these positive charges behave in the same way, generally moving towards the negative charges and avoiding each other. It's easiest for these paths to start at sharp points closest to the cloud(like a flagpole)\n\nAs the negative charges get close to the positive charges, the attraction get stronger, and one of the negatively charged paths will contact either the ground, or one of the positively charged paths. As the ionized paths have much lower resistance than normal air, all the remaining charge will flow through this established path, and you may get several pulses of lightning as more negative charge regions within the cloud use the established path to get down to ground. \n\nBasically, the shape is established before there's a connection all the way from the cloud to the ground.",
"There are also weird things that happen with the electric field at the pointy bits of the lightning rod, according to my physics professir. I'm not sure exactly what happens there, though.",
"With everyone focusing on the zig-zag path through the air, I'll take a stab at the precise points such as the end of a pole part. Basically, an electrical charge tries to spread out evenly across the surface of an object, balancing against the repulsive force of neighbouring charges. On a curved surface, the component of the force along the surface becomes less, so more charge particles can balance there. The sharper the curve, the higher the charge. Since lightning is attracted to the highest charge, lightning rods are made thin and pointy. They become the place of the highest charge on a building, so the lightning is attracted there.",
"The path with the least resistance to get to that point is the one the lightning takes, hence the zig zags that seem random to us",
"Lightning as you see it does not travel from a cloud to the ground. It travels from the ground to a cloud.\n\nThe reason it leaves the Earth from the tip of a lightning rod is because the rod is connected to ground with a highly conductive material. Electricity always takes the path of least resistance, and the conduit up to the top of the rod is exactly that path. \n\nFrom the tip of the rod, though, there is no \"nice\" path. It jumps from point to point in the air because the points it hops to, for whatever reason, have lower resistance and closer proximity to the previous point than other points. This is a bit chaotic because air has all sorts of matter floating around in it, so, in the instant that lightning occurs, not all \"spots\" in the air path of the bolt are equally conductive. Thus, erratic jumping.\n\nLightning can travel from the cloud to the ground, too. In this case, a lightning rod picks up the strike because it is the closest, most conductive point for an arcing bolt to connect to ground.",
"It does not strike exact points. It strikes multiple points, and a fraction of a second later it has the main strike at one of the many points that were struck first and then there is often a return strike from the earth to the sky.",
"The flow of electricity is like cars on streets. When you’re in the car, the path of least resistance is to follow the streets. You could take a straight line from A to B, but only if you drive through houses and buildings and stuff.\n\nSo the lightning travels the streets, the path of least resistance, until it touches something that conducts better than air. Then it’s like hitting the open highway, you can go faster with nothing slowing you down.",
"It spreads across the sky until it hits something, then shoots all the power through that point. Like this:\n_URL_0_",
"Posters above me already have a good answer. Lightning travels the path of least resistance in the air. This fact is used to developed something called [Electrolaser](_URL_0_). It's something that can direct electricity to a target. In this case the path of least resistance is the ionized gas around the laser.\n\n > A laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) is formed by the following process: A laser emits a laser beam into the air. The laser beam rapidly heats and ionizes surrounding gases to form plasma.The plasma forms an electrically conductive plasma channel.\n\n\nIt's currently being used as a prototype weapon or a lightning rod for lightning study and electrical power generation.",
"You ever see Plinko on The Price is Right? Similar. ",
"Randall Munroe wrote a great article explaining some of the science of lightning strikes on his What-If blog. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nFor those that don’t want to read the whole post here is the most relevant quote to the original question. \n\n“So the place on the ground where we see a bolt “strike” is the spot where the leader first makes contact with the surface. The leader moves down through the air in little jumps. It’s ultimately feeling its way toward the (usually) positive charge in the ground. However, it only “feels” charges within a few tens of meters of the tip. If there’s something connected to the ground within that distance, the bolt will jump to it. Otherwise, it jumps out in a semi-random direction and repeats the process.”"
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"http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/lightning.htm"
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av74r9 | math for combination outcomes | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/av74r9/eli5_math_for_combination_outcomes/ | {
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"3 * 3 * 3 = 27.\n\nEach ring has three possible states, so for each possible state on the Outer ring there are three possible states on the Middle ring, and for each possible state on the Middle ring there are three on the Inner ring.\n\nBrute forcing it would be \n\nBBB \nBBD \nBBC (nice) \nBDB \nBDD \nBDC \nBCB \nBCD \nBCC \nDBB \nDBD \nDBC \nDDB \nDDD \nDDC \nDCB \nDCD \nDCC \nCBB \nCBD \nCBC \nCDB \nCDD \nCDC \nCCB \nCCD \nCCC"
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aadxbx | why do companies try to reduce inventory at end of year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aadxbx/eli5_why_do_companies_try_to_reduce_inventory_at/ | {
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"A lot of companies will update their financial records once per year. So, they account for how much they've made in sales and how much they had to pay for the products they sold. This gives them their overall profit for the year.\n\nIn order to make their profit number as high as possible they will try to sell as much of their inventory right before they do the accounting. That way they have as much money as possible in sales.\n\nAlso, it can just be an excuse to have a sale. A lot of consumers feel like they're getting tricked if a company has a sale for no reason. So, when there's a rational explanation for the sale they can feel like they have leverage over the company. This gives them a rationalization to make them think they're getting a really good deal when they might be paying much closer to a normal price than they assume.",
"\n1. Counting/validating inventory is a painful laborious task. If you have low inventory it makes it easier to count and validate.\n\n2. Inventory represents money you have spent but haven't sold yet. So having low inventory helps your acid test ratio ( short term assets (less inventory) /short term liabilities). A healthy company this ratio is > 1. So I would rather show I have cash to pay for my short term debt rather than no cash but lots of inventory.\n\nAlso mentioned, inventory clearance sales are a method to get some last minute revenue before year end."
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5znvf0 | why is it that unplugging the wifi router can fix the problem with slow internet, and what happens to cause it to becomes slower than it should be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5znvf0/eli5_why_is_it_that_unplugging_the_wifi_router/ | {
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"The router has something called a translation table. It's a list of all connections currently going on. When a computer using the router wants to connect to something on the internet, the router writes it down in the translation table so that when a response arrives the router knows what to do with it and to which computer to send it.\n\nThe router is supposed to know when connections end and remove them from the table, but like all programs, router software can have bugs, and sometimes those bugs cause connections to stay in the table forever. Eventually, the table fills up, and when your computer tries to make a new connection, it fails because the router has nowhere to write it down. This makes your internet work erratically, because most of the time it won't work, but sometimes some space in the table frees up and briefly you can make connections again.\n\nRestarting the router empties the table and solves the problem until it fills up again.\n\nThere are some other possible reasons for this - maybe the router's software crashed, or there is a problem with the connection between it and the internet that will be solved by starting it from scratch - but I think this is the most likely, and the others are too specific to know about or explain anyway."
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8xw2lf | why is “binge drinking” so unhealthy? | I don’t understand why people keep telling me taking long breaks from alcohol in between nights where I’ll drink too much is supposed to be the worst kind of drinking for your body. Wouldn’t it be worse if I drank every night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xw2lf/eli5_why_is_binge_drinking_so_unhealthy/ | {
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"Do you play any sports or exercise?\n\nYour body is good at things it is used to. Doing nothing for a while then running a marathon is going to be really shitty on your body. But if you run a little everyday your body be in way better shape for it, and it wont be a problem.",
"Alcohol is effectively a poison that takes a lot to actually kill you. By binge drinking several times a week you can permanently damage your liver that filters out toxins and waste from your body. This will cause these to build up in your system and can cause even more damage.",
"Put more simply, alcohol (ethanol) is basically poisoning your body, and your liver is working to stop this by breaking it down. However, it does this pretty slowly. So, if you had 2 drinks over a few hours every night for a week, you have 14 drinks in a week but your liver keeps up and vreaks it down before it can build up in your body. As you drink more and more at one time, the alcohol builds up faster than your liver can detoxify it, causing damage that can be long lasting.",
"This is a tricky one. You're literally playing with poison here. There's not a good option to consume it. \n\nAlcohol puts a strain on your liver. Your liver will attempt to compensate and get better at dealing with alcohol. If you do this regularly, this means your liver gets good at dealing with alcohol. \n\nIf you drink heavily once in a while, then you shock your liver. It isn't ready to deal with that much alcohol. It's too much for it to bear. Then the alcohol is out of your system and your liver goes back to doing what it does when there's no alcohol in your system. "
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267xbv | why do most professional sports(us) require 4-7 games to determine the winner in the finals(or equivalent), but football needs only one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/267xbv/eli5why_do_most_professional_sportsus_require_47/ | {
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"Football is really physically taxing, since it's a full-contact sport. Even playing once a week, the injury rate is high and the rate of long-term problems is higher than in other sports. If the NFL used a best-of-7 format instead of single elimination, then either each series would take a month, or the players would be barely able to walk by the end of it. ",
"The physical toll that football players undergo every game is ridiculous. I only played receiver at a high school level, and I felt like I got hit by a train the morning after a game. They would need a week break between each game, that would take way too long to complete the playoffs. They are talking about expanding the regular season to 18 games and many players are against it due to the sheer wear and tear on their body after 16.",
"It mostly has to do with the individual sport and how physical it is. Football only has 16 games in its season (then playoffs) while other sports have many more games. Basketball has 82 games in a season, Hockey has 82 games in a season, and Baseball has 162 games per season. \n\nSo therefore it makes since that the playoffs are shorter for sports that play less games. ",
"Football is the most physically tolling of the major north american sports. There's a reason a football season is only 16 games long (CFL is 18). A basketball/hockey season is 82 games long. An MLB season is 162 games long. Having a best of 7 playoffs in football would end up with a post season that's, in all likelihood, equal to or longer than the regular season and that's just too many games if you like your football players healthy(-ish).\n\nThe way it's set up now, playoffs are ~1/4 of a regular season for football, hockey, basketball, and soccer. The exception is baseball where I'd say the playoffs are probably too short in comparison to the regular season.",
"All games, sports or otherwise, started as competitions of skill and chance. To eliminate chance they made the games a series of events - best of 5 for example. First one to win 3 games is declared the winner and chance takes a back seat. \n\nThe World Series was best of 7 and best of 9 a few times for increased sales (didn't work), but it stuck. Other organizations saw this and kept the model for revenue purposes.\n\nThe Super Bowl is one game at the end because the sport is much more grueling than others. Games per season: NFL: 16 games over 17 weeks, NHL: 82 games over 24-30 weeks. MLB: 162 games over 180 days. "
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aivhmq | how exactly does a trade deficit between two countries work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aivhmq/eli5_how_exactly_does_a_trade_deficit_between_two/ | {
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"You buy groceries from the grocery store and sell nothing to it. You have a 100% trade deficit with your grocery store. You trade your labor for money with your employer, your employer has a 100% trade deficit with you. ",
"Country A produces pineapples. Country B produces milk. If country A sells more pineapples than they buy milk from country B (in dollar terms), then country B has a trade deficit.\n\nThis is not a problem for people in country B, since they get access to pineapples. If their dairy Farmers tried to grow pineapples, it would be lower quality and higher cost.\n\nIn order to buy pineapples, country B must convert their currency B-bucks to A-bucks. They must buy A-bucks on the forex market. This will increase the demand for A-bucks, increase the supply of B-bucks, and the exchange rate for B bucks will fall.\n\nLower B-bucks makes milk cheaper for country A, so they buy more milk. This will offset the trade deficit. Over time, without intervention, trade deficits are naturally resolved. Country A and country B need not do anything to correct trade deficit."
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4fvn4u | why do some books have uneven cut pages and some are perfectly flush? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fvn4u/eli5_why_do_some_books_have_uneven_cut_pages_and/ | {
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"It's an aesthetic to look like old books. Just like buying new jeans that are already old and worn to give it that authentic look. "
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3e4e33 | why do cars on main streets typically travel in clusters? | Cars usually travel in clusters as opposed to being equally spread out? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e4e33/eli5why_do_cars_on_main_streets_typically_travel/ | {
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"Traffic lights have more to do with this than anything else; red lights separating groups of vehicles.",
"Surprisingly enough, traffic lights in many (most?) cities are designed to slow traffic down, and by extension create artificial choke points and therefore, congestion.",
"Any driver traveling slower than normal will tend to create a cluster of vehicles right behind, who would otherwise be going faster.",
"If the average car is going faster than you, you tend to speed up. If the average car is going slower than you, you tend to slow down. "
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7yolnb | why do violins have f-shaped sound holes? | Some guitars have round sound holes, what is the difference and why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yolnb/eli5why_do_violins_have_fshaped_sound_holes/ | {
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"Sound is simply a compression wave of air particles. In a violin, those compressions are created when the bow is dragged across the strings which gets them vibrating, and the frequency is changed by the length of the string as held down by the player. However, by themselves, the strings don't make much sound (think of what an electric guitar sounds like unplugged). Coupled with a resonating wooden body, it gets a lot more interesting. The materials used and the shape and other characteristics of the body of the guitar or violin make a big difference. For an in-depth look at violins, check [this](_URL_0_) out.\n\nBut as for your question, the \"f\" shape doesn't so much matter as they are long slits of a particular area and location on the face of the instrument that change the way the air moves in and around the instrument.\n\n"
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7k1yx5 | why does chili leave a stain on plastic bowls when other foods don't? | You know, that orangeish ring around the top level of the microwave safe plastic dish that you reheated your chili in. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7k1yx5/eli5_why_does_chili_leave_a_stain_on_plastic/ | {
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"Plastic is slightly porous, which means it has tiny holes at the microscopic level that allows certain molecules to squeeze into. One of the compounds in tomato sauce is [Lycopene](_URL_0_), which is the right size and polarity to fit into those pores. Lycopene is bright red, which is why the plastic changes colors. Lycopene is non-polar so can't be easily washed away by water, but bleach is pretty effective at removing it.",
"**Lycopene** is a common orange pigment in certain plants, especially tomatoes.Note that it's structurally closely related to beta carotene which is the eponymous pigment in carrots\n\nLycopene is highly soluble in oils and fats, but basically water insoluble.\n\nThe second part of this is that many plastics have substances called plasticizers added to them to aid in molding the items. Especially cheap PVC-based dinnerware.\n\nPlasticizers are waxy or greasy compounds which are highly water insoluble, but capable of being dissolved in the plastic matrix when melted. Examples being long chain phthalate esters.\n\nThis makes the plastics more flexible easier to mold, and less prone to cracking when heated.\n\nUnfortunately, the lycopene is also soluble in the plasticizers. So you end up with droplets of oil in your hot food with a high amount of lycopene from the tomato base of the chilli. When the oil sticks to the side if the bowl, some of the lycopene gets transferred to the plasticizer.\n\nBottom line- buy some quality ceramic bowls."
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5stpdy | is there an equation to determine how long it will take a given volume of liquid to freeze? if not, why is that? | The other day I was making some fresh ice cubes, and I wondered how long (approximately) it would take the water to freeze. Having made ice cubes more than once in my life, I realized I could come up with an estimate based purely on past observations. Because I'm using the same freezer, the same ice cube tray, the same water supply, etc. the time it takes to freeze should be about the same each time. (I don't know that to be true as I've never sat down and timed it, and repeated the process multiple times).
The time it takes for a liquid to freeze under a set of specific conditions feels like a basic physical property of a liquid. I understand there are probably a multitude of very small variables that need to be accounted for (the way particles interact with one another, the polarity of the molecules, the exact volume of the liquid, the exact ambient temp, how good the container is at conducting heat, etc.) but shouldn't there be a way to set some ideal conditions (like negating air resistance in physics) and relate all of these concepts together in the form of an equation?
At the very least, shouldn't there be an upper and lower limit to the amount of time it would take for a given volume of liquid to freeze? Shouldn't there be a (relatively) simple equation to approximate a time required to freeze a liquid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5stpdy/eli5_is_there_an_equation_to_determine_how_long/ | {
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"No, as far as I can tell, there isn't.\n\nThere's a good discussion on the subject [here](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you scroll to about 2/3 of the way down the page, someone has given an equation for the time it takes for water to reach 0 degrees C. Even that equation, though, contains a constant, K, which\n\n > is dependant on air flow profiles and container geometry, so it is essentially unknown until you determine it experimentally for a given geometry and set of conditions.\n\nIn other words, it depends on things like the surface area of the water, the impurities in the water, any currents in the water - things which are impossible to measure and describe accurately.\n\nBut that only gets you down to 0 degrees in a liquid form.\n\nThen, you need to continue removing energy from the water until it freezes and crystallises. And\n\n > this too is extremely sensitive to conditions such as water purity, vibration levels and container geometry, so there's no way to tell this number theoretically\n\nHowever, the commenter also notes that you might consider crystallisation time to be negligible compared to the time it takes to reach 0 degrees C.\n\nAnother commenter disagrees that it's not possible to work out the crystallisation time, and goes into great lengths about why it's possible. However, he never actually produces an equation to do it.",
"The best you could do without empirical trial and error to come up with your own equation for your circumstances is estimate the heat loss required to drop the temp to freezing. \n\nIn order to determine time, one would need the exact mass and area of the fluid, fluid composition in terms of thermal conductivity coefficient, the temperature at all points inside the fluid and the temp around the fluid. Additionally the heat transfer rate would have to be known. \n\nThe problem is that heat transfer isn't linear. It's proportional to the temperature difference between fluid and the air. When that temperature is large, you have much quicker heat transfer at the surface. However, the liquid temperature is not constant throughout. It will have its core that is warmer and it's surface which is coldest. \n\nSo you are dealing with two versions of the first law of thermodynamics, iterative calculations of the internal temperature change, throw in some fluid dynamics laws since it's a liquid and not a solid. \n\nIf you can come up with a simple equation for all of that, (not saying it's impossible) then you will be very rich!",
"You need to calculate the rate at which heat can be transferred out of the water to cool it down and freeze it. This will depend largely on the power of your freezer, and also a little on the geometry of the ice cube tray and the materials it is made of (as this will affect how quickly heat travels through them).\n\nThe total amount of heat that needs to be removed is determined by the mass and temperature of the water - first you have to suck out enough heat to get it down to 0 degC and liquid, then you have to suck out enough heat to turn it from a liquid to a solid.\n\nSay you wanted to make 1 kg of ice cubes from water at 15 degC. You would need to take out 63 kJ of energy to bring it down to 0 degC, then about 334 kJ to freeze it - about 400 kJ total. The equations that tell you this are the heat capacity and the latent heat of fusion.\n\nKnowing the heat transfer rate of your freezer is pretty difficult because it involves compressor performance, heat transfer and convection of air, but let's imagine we know it can cool the water down at 40W (that's 40 Joules per second). It would take about 2 hours and 45 minutes to freeze the water into ice."
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2g2932 | what exactly is al qaeda? how are they organised? is it one single group? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g2932/eli5_what_exactly_is_al_qaeda_how_are_they/ | {
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"Quoting answer from a previous reply:\n \nIts not a simple answer because Al Qaeda is NOT a simple terrorist group.\n\nThe point of Al Qaeda, as laid out by Bin Laden, is not a single group with a single goal, but as the Arabic translation plainly tell us, to be \"the base\" for multiple related but not 100% similar groups, causes, and goals.\n\nThis is NO single thing Al Qaeda wants because the is NO single Al Qaeda. There's Al Qaeda in Iraq (now fracturing into AQI and ISIS), there's Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQM), Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, also Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. The original Afghanistan franchise is also still present with the remnants of the Taliban in the Pakistan Tribal areas. Plus these franchises, literally they are franchises, they use the Al Qaeda name and sometimes share finances/fighters but they have semi-independent leadership and act towards separate goals.\n\nBin Laden states goals where many, but the usual demands in his fatwa videos included: Removal of US soldiers and sailors from Saudi Arabia, end of US support of Israel, the overthrow of several western friendly Middle East governments, and the replacement of them with a unified Islamic Caliphate or one super Arab-Muslim state in the gulf.\n\nOthers linked to Al Qaeda have also demanded the forced conversion of all non-Muslims, the replacement of civil law with Sharia religious law, the complete destruction of Israel, or for an Islamic Caliphate to extend beyond the middle east and conquer the world.\n\nTo accomplish these, Al Qaeda was supposed to be a linked network of terrorism support groups. The training camps in pre 9/11 Afghanistan hosted terrorists from all over the world. Al Qaeda would link financier X with group Y to move money. They would provide their franchise groups with better planning of attacks and strategy. You could share bomb makers. One guy learns an IED to defeat armored Humvees, Al Qaeda would hook up other groups with him. It was envisioned as a one stop terrorist super store/support line.\n\nEach individual group had its own motivations, usually less about Islam and infidels, and more about seizing regional power and taking political control. Al Qaeda in Iraq talks a good game about hating Jews and Americans, but really they just bomb and kill other Iraqi Muslims so that AQI can get more political control over the west of Iraq. They couldn't care less about Al Qaeda in the Maghreb fighting in Libya or Algeria or the Taliban's fight in Afghanistan. Bin Laden simply built them a common support network for training, money, and strategy; but not a governing body where they vote on the general platforms of terrorism.\n\nThis split has only gotten bigger since most of the senior leadership have been killed or captured since 9/11. Al Qaeda is less about the spectacular overseas attacks (9/11, London bombings, Madrid train attacks) of which OBL and KSM were proponents and more about these regional franchises attacking regionally for regional gain. \n \n Credits to _URL_0_"
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aum3yy | how astronomers can observe for a prolonged period of time a tiny part of the sky, with the earth rotating around its axis and the sun | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aum3yy/eli5_how_astronomers_can_observe_for_a_prolonged/ | {
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"They mostly use a device called a heliostat. This is a device which you add to your telescope mount and configure it so that it aligns with the plane of the rotation of the planet. There is a motor attached to it, or you can turn it manually, that will rotate your telescope once every 24 hours. So the end result is that your telescope will be pointed towards the same point in the sky even if the Earth is rotating underneath it since the heliostat will counter the movement of the Earth. More fancy setups will have a fully motorized mount for the telescope which includes a heliostat function.",
"The simplest way is by moving the mount as the Earth rotates, the rotation of the Earth is close enough to constant in speed and axis of rotation so you only need to move in one axis (the right ascension). This is possible by hand simply turning a certain screw along with a clock (see barn door tracker). \n\n\nPast a few minutes of exposure or with longer focal lengths you'll need motors on both axis to correct for errors in the drive which can be done by guiding where you use a small and fast camera to record a star and adjust the tracking of the scope to keep that star in the same place in the guide scope, this will also keep the image of the main scope in the same place ideally. \n\n\nPractically modern telescopes no longer track in right ascension and declination but just use a 'normal' alt-azimuth mount which can track left/right and up/down. ",
"The most straightforward way is to put the telescope on a mount that can rotate about an axis parallel to the Earth's rotation axis -- the axis points toward Polaris, the North Star. This is called an \"equatorial mount\". So as the Earth rotates once every 24 hours, a motor turns the telescope the other direction once every 24 hours to compensate. In the old days, a system of weights and pulleys was used instead of a motor, but same idea.\n\nThe less straightforward way is to put the telescope on a mount that rotates about one axis perpendicular to the ground, and another parallel to the ground. This is an \"alt-azimuth\" mount. It can track the stars as they move through the sky, but the stars will still appear to rotate in its field of view. You can fix that problem with a special arrangement of prisms called a \"derotator\", or you can just take a bunch of short exposures and de-rotate them before adding them together to form a final image."
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jmqoo | why does my electric razor stop charging when i turn it on? | I can use my phone while it's charging, and it keeps charging. But if I turn on my razor while it's charging, it stops charging until I turn it off. It's been like this for every electric razor I've owned. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jmqoo/eli5_why_does_my_electric_razor_stop_charging/ | {
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"Imagine you are pouring water (electricity) into a jug (battery). All of a sudden you decide you want to drink some water so you stick your head under the tap and drink all the water (using the razor) that is flowing so none of it goes into the jug (stops charging).",
"Imagine you are pouring water (electricity) into a jug (battery). All of a sudden you decide you want to drink some water so you stick your head under the tap and drink all the water (using the razor) that is flowing so none of it goes into the jug (stops charging)."
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8oftlz | why can humans swim but gorillas can't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oftlz/eli5_why_can_humans_swim_but_gorillas_cant/ | {
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"If you look at the great ape non of them can swim without training.\n\nWe know that humans, chimpanzees, orangutans can learn to swim . \n\nBonobo can likely learn as the are quite similar to a chimpanzees but it was hard to find information when there is a brand of swimwear with the same name.\n\nSo the is it he only remaining great ape the gorilla left. The answer to the question it we don't know. Gorillas are quite rare and are large and hard to handle even when young for human there have been no attempt. Almost all other swimming apes have been reached by humans\n\n\nFor gorillas living in zoos you often don't what to teach them to swim as water are used a moats in their enclosures.\n\nSo gorillas can likely swim if they are trained but no on have tried. \n\n\nThe reson that great apes problems swimming compare to four legged mammals it the way we more around. There have been a lot of cruel test in the past to test how good they are at swimming and for how long they can swim.\n\nFor a dog swimming is the same movement as walking and they float in a way wit the head above the water. List of mammals that can swim include bats that one might guess would have problem.\n\nThere is only one four legged mammal that we are not sure if it can swim and that is the Giraffe. The shape of there bodys result that the would float in a strange way and would need to bend the neck for the head to stay out of water. There have been no test as you cant do it in a safe way and if it might have a high chase of killing the animal so it is not a popular test to do today.\n\n\n\n"
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a30dek | what are derivatives, bonds, options, equities, shares and how are they all different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a30dek/eli5_what_are_derivatives_bonds_options_equities/ | {
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"I think if you're that far from the world of finance, it would be difficult for you to get a job there.\n\nBut hey, it's an interesting request.\n\nBond: A company (or government) wants to borrow money to pay for some new equipment or whatever. It issues bonds - papers, each of which is sold for X dollars, and is a promise by the company to pay X+Y dollars to whoever brings the bond back after Z days. The guy who bought the bond from the company can sell it to someone else for a little lower than Y usually.\n\nShare (of stock): Literally a share of the company and all its assets. Whereas a bond is just a promise to pay back some money with interest, a share is partial ownership, including the right to receive a part of the company's profit (this is the dividend). There are different kinds of stock - some let you vote at shareholder meetings, some don't, it's a long story.\n\nOption: the right to buy a share from the company at a fixed price. You're then allowed to keep the share (and receive dividends), or sell it on the open market at whatever the market price is. The option price is usually lower than the market price, so the difference is your big profit. Usually there's a delay between when you get the promise to let you buy a share, and the day on which you can actually buy it (and then sell it) - this delay is called vesting.\n\nDerivative: something done by people in the financial sector, an agreement whose outcome depends on the behavior of another security (is derived from that other security). Let's say you're a banker and you've made a loan to a local business. You're worried about that business going bankrupt, so you go to a different bank and say, \"I'll give you a thousand bucks now, and you keep it whatever happens. But if this million-dollar loan defaults, you cover the million dollars\". The other bank looks at the loan, thinks \"nah, this will get paid back\", and takes your thousand dollars. The agreement between your bank and the other bank is a derivative on the loan.\n\nFuture: Kinda like an option, but in reverse, and originally for physical goods. You've got a client who owns a bakery. He knows he'll need a thousand pounds of flour by Christmas, but right now it's March, and he doesn't know what the wheat harvest will be, and what the price of flour will be in December. So he comes to you, the banker, and says: \"I'll pay you five thousand bucks right now, to get a thousand pounds of flour in December.\" You take his money. In December, the price of flour is four bucks a pound. You buy the flour and have it delivered to his bakery, and you made a thousand bucks in profit. The contract between you and the bakery is called a future.\n\nAsset: Anything that isn't cash, but can be turned into cash.\n\nHedge: A way of managing a huge chunk of money on investments of different risk levels. Say you have a million bucks. Now, you could put the whole million in a bank deposit that pays 3% per year, and you'd get 1030k back. But you put 900k in the bank. A year later you will get 927k back. You take the other 100k and go nuts with it, investing in all kinds of very risky, potentially very profitable ventures. You're hedging your bets by investing into both really stable and really risky ventures. At worst, your loss is no more than 1000-927=73k; but if you're lucky, you'll make a lot more than 30k from investing that 100k over the year, so you've gotten a better return on your investment than you would with just the bank.",
"Derivatives: Derivatives are any financial instruments whose value is determined by the value of another asset. \n\nBonds: Bonds are issued by institutions to raise money. Bonds have a set length and interest rate. You buy a bond, and you will receive a set amount at every interval. At the end of a prearranged period, you will receive the amount you initially put in. Bonds get way more complex, but that's the simplest way to think of it. \n\nEquities: Just another term for stock or shares.\n\nStocks: Stocks are basically small pieces of a company. Companies issue them to raise money. Some stocks pay dividends, which are payments to stockholders to reward them for holding the stock. Stocks rise and fall in value based on whether people believe the company is doing well or will do well. \n\nOptions: Options give the holder the right(but not obligation) to buy or sell a certain stock at a certain price. There are calls, the right to buy a certain stock for a certain price. And there are puts, the right to sell a certain stock at a certain price. You would use a call option when the call price(the price you can buy at) is lower than the market price. And you would use a put option when the strike price(price you can sell at) is higher than the market price.\n\nFutures: Futures give the holder the obligation to buy an asset at a prearranged price on a prearranged date. It is used to eliminate uncertainty that can be caused due to the fluctuation of the prices of things like oil, foodstuffs, or precious metals \n\nAssets: A general term for anything of value held by an individual or institution. In finance, it refers to stocks, bonds, derivatives, but for companies it also includes buildings, machinery, land, etc.\n\nTrading: The buying and selling of financial instruments(stocks, bonds, derivatives).\n\nHedges: Buying or selling financial instruments with the goal of minimizing uncertainty and losses. It often takes the form of buying or selling financial instruments whose price moves the opposite direction as another asset. For example, if you buy stock in an oil company, you might also purchase stock in a solar company to hedge your investment. The hedge is always going to be smaller than the main investment. Hedging will reduce your losses, but it will also reduce gains. But hedging is all about consistency and reducing uncertainty. "
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6cnlpb | why do we still need to bring our license and registration to drive? considering it's 2017 and we have enough technology to have all this information in the cloud / in our phones and match with the cops information. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cnlpb/eli5_why_do_we_still_need_to_bring_our_license/ | {
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"The thing about government is that it has to be slow to adopt these technologies to function well as they have to be able to server literally everyone, not just most. There are plenty of people that don't have smart phones but still drive, or don't have internet and drive. We know the current license and registration system works, why change it? Additionally something like a driver's license has to be somewhat immune to fakes, I'm not sure there's a good solution that would work on a phone. Additionally many people would have reservations about giving their phones to police, notice the uproar over customs agents asking for people to unlock their phones so they can poke around?",
"cloud/digital documents and data it's still a very young concept. every officer would have to be trained on verifying the information, local jurisdictions would have to figure out a safe and practical way for an officer to look at the data. if you get pulled over, do you hand your $800 phone to the cop so he can go in his car and do his duties? do you want to hand your phone to a cop? some may not want that. i wouldn't. what if your phone is dead? or has no signal? how will you prove your identity? what if the cloud is down? some states do have an official dmv app which has your license, but each state would have to develop their own system. ",
"In addition to the slowness of governments to adopt and adapt to new technologies, frankly, I don't want to hand my phone over to a cop. That's a good way for them to just happen to find incriminating evidence or a way to never see that phone again.",
"You don't? Least you don't in the UK.",
"Some states have already done away with it. Officers will still request it just because it's a quick verification step, but they can look everything up by your name on their computers in their squad cars.\n\nI know in my state at least you are not required to have your license or registration on you while driving.",
"1) Not everyone has a phone and they cannot legally require you to purchase one. \n\n2) Even if you have a phone they cannot legally require you to have an app or connect your data to it. \n\n3) There are large stretches of the country without cell service. This would render your system useless in those areas. \n\n4) Many would not be willing to hand their phone over to a police officer. The potential for data being stolen is too high. You also have to hand it over when purchasing alcohol, going to bars, going to R rated movies, etc. There is just too much risk to have ID being digital. \n\n5) Having it be digital means it is more vulnerable to attack, and corruption. ",
"I see a lot of really wrong answers her, the real reason is money. I was a patrolman back in the early nineties and all license and registration info was available through dispatch. We know before we ever approached the driver whether or not your registration is up and who owns the vehicle.\n\n\nYour failure to bring an extremely thin piece of paper with you everywhere you drive results in a ticket and court fees. In some places it also leads to impoundment and applicable fees. I could go on and on but I hate making comments using my phone.",
"Love how everyone is downplaying the biggest reason - at this point phone app technology is still nowhere near as secure as piece of laminated plastic with a hologram watermark & magnetic strip on it. \n\nNot to mention it would make it so very likely that someone would hack that data base to steal the personal information for one of the biggest credit fraud schemes in history...",
"Also, let's not forget how useful driver licenses are for general identification. Good luck trying to buy alcohol without a physical ID.",
"Technology isn't perfect, and databases aren't always up to date.\n\nI was once pulled over by a cop. He told me that he ran my plates, and I was flagged as having an expired registration. When he came up to my car he saw my registration sticker on the windshield, saw that it was current and correct, explained the mix up, and then let me leave.\n\nWith that said, I've pulled up my insurance on my phone and cops have taken it. I just have to hope my phone is always charged when I'm pulled over.",
"I never realised it was law to carry your license & registration in the U.S. Here in the UK if you get pulled over & asked for your licence, if you don't have it you get something like a week to drop by your local station to produce it. Also the records of registered keepers of all vehicles are stored on a database so you don't need to show that at all.",
"It shouldn't be in our phones, it should be in their phones. \n\nYou tell them \"I'm gsasquatch born on 5/22/17\" and they punch that into their device, get your picture to verify, and it's as good as having handed them a license. If you're getting pulled over in a car, they probably already have run the plate through SCMODS. They could easily carry all the drivers license data of everyone in the state off line in their car, and download any other state as long as they have connectivity. In areas of no cell signal there aren't many people around nor crime happening. \n\n \n\n\n\n",
"Why the heck would you want to rely on a phone for something that important? technology is incredibly unreliable. your phone could run out of battery, break, lose connection with the internet or simply decide to not co-operate at that moment. Having a physical card is safer, faster and easier. ",
"I just wanted to point out, that [is a thing](_URL_0_) that is starting to happen.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThere are already states that allow you to have your ID on your smartphone. AL and MS are the ones that I can think of. I support the software.",
"$$$. All police cars have on board computers that could easily link to Secretary of State databases of vehicle registration. \n\nDriver license could be similar if facial recognition tools were more advanced. \n\nHowever, insurance companies have no mandate to share customer data. Only politicians without ties to the insurance industry could pass regulations to share. \n\nOf course local police forces would be giving up ticket revenues, so don't wait for change. \n",
"I understand why a phone may not be the answer for the same reasond many other commenters have made. But I do not understand why we need to carry a licence at all. These days (at least in Australia) the cops have a computer connected to the database of all drivers. They can display your photo and driving history at the click of a few keys. Given all of the information on my licence is from this database, why can't they just look me up?",
"As a prior cop really... Honestly if you didn't have your license but k ew your SSN that was okay. Or if the car was registered to you I could just run the plates and then get your drivers customer number off that. \n\nHaving a license makes it easier since all your info is right there on a little card. \n\nReally as long as you were licensed I didn't give a shit if you had it or not. I can pull the DMV picture up to ensure its you regardless...unless it's down which it does go down from time to time. ",
"I think a lot of people, including OP, don't realize just how many places you can drive that have very poor or even no cellular signal. Having the information on the cloud doesn't work when you have no access to the cloud.",
"In the US if you don't have your drivers license on you, a police officer can indeed just run your name and birthday and find out if your valid. Although you will get a citation for not having it if you and/or the officer are jerks at the encounter. It's just easier if you have it and they can just take it and scan it. Also, I'm not sure if their computers can pull your picture to verify you're not giving them someone else's name and DOB. Many rural areas probably still do radio dispatching. \n\nAlso, in the US there's no requirement to carry a passport or national ID card, so a driver's license is a de-facto ID card for drinking, cashing a check, renting a hotel room, whatever (If you don't drive you can get a non-drivers-license state ID card). Generally children don't have a need to carry an ID until they're old enough to drive. \n\nAnd believe it or not, everyone does not have a smartphone. My mother and sister do not, just \"old fashioned\" flip phones. ",
"If the records were accessible to the police on their computers inside if their cars, I don't see why the driver would need to have a smartphone. That being said, the aforementioned problem of Internet availability still comes into play",
"Well the most obvious reason is to make sure you have a drivers license to begin with. Since it is against the law in all 50 states to operate a vehicle without a license. It is also government form of issued identification. So, when the cop pulls you over and ask for your state ID there is no question as to who you are. By having everything ready in hand, it just moves the process faster. Having to rely on a phone or technical device is not always faithful. You need internet connection to access the cloud. You get pulled over. No 4G around now what? Take a picture and have saved on your phone. But shit happens to phones. People lose them, they break, stolen, hacked into. You may not want photos of your license, and registration out there ready for the public to grab. You may seem an honest and trustworthy person. The person next to you may not be. ",
"In Australia we will have digital licences soon. We already have ditched registration stickers on vehicles. Our Police cars have special cameras that can scan multiple lanes of traffic that check the registration of up to 1 million vehicles per hour. ",
"Actual cop here when I ask for license and registration ti'm really asking for each for a different purpose. I ask for your license because a lot of times the driver isn't the registered owner of the car. Sure I can look it up by name/dob, but the card lets me compare faces right there. You can give me someone's name/dob that looks super similar to you, and get away with it. Most fake IDs are easy as hell to spot. Once I get someone's license I don't even bother to look at the dates on it, I just run their license number through NCIC to make sure it is valid.\n\nI ask for registration for the sole purpose of showing people their shit is actually expired. I know it is expired because I already ran it before I pulled you, but 99% of the time I'll get a \"it can't be expired\" or \"there is no way it has been expired that long\". If they've already dug out the registration is can literally point to it and end that line of argument.\n\nAnother good thing about asking for documents is that it is great for getting people who are drunk/high. Most can get their IDs just fine, but I've yet to see a drunk get their registration right on the first try. ",
"I'd rather have a license on a card. Why are you all so eager to have every bit of discoverable personal information out there on the internet? ",
"Why would you hand your phone to a cop?",
"I got pulled over a few months back and did not have my insurance paper in the vehicle since I took it out for some stupid reason. I told the officer I had insurance and he responded with \"I know, I'd you didn't you'd be getting a much bigger fine\" \n\nSo if you know I have insurance based on your database why do I deserve a ticket.. because it \"slowed him down\" \n\nRidiculous. ",
"Drivers licenses will be digital in Iowa next year. [Des Moines Register](_URL_0_)",
"You can use your phone for insurance, which is a cool feature in life, right?\n\nOK, now think about this: The cop asks for insurance; you provide insurance via your phone; the cop takes your phone to verify insurance....the cop now has your phone. \n\nNow what? What's to stop the cop from trying to access personal information, such as contacts or pictures? When's the last time you were pulled over where you had the *privilege* to walk back to the police vehicle and monitor the cop? \n\n > But if they use a hand scanner.....\n\nOK, what if the hand scanner isn't working? You think they're going to write down your info or take a photo of your phone? Nope! \n\nThis is why a physical copy of your insurance is valuable. You hand it to 'em/they do whatever with it/they hand it back. Their squad car *hopefully* captures the motions of it. \n\nDigital licenses? Imagine the pain when you're in nowhere, USA trying to buy a beer and \"the database is down\". From discrimination to corruption: this is a HORRIBLE idea. I can easily picture, just like folks still do today, cases where you don't wanna serve someone so you just make up an excuse about \"the database\". \n\n\"Hey, the database is down right now for running your license. We'll just need to wait here for a bit....\"",
"Just like your phone and wifi at home, sometimes law enforcement technology is not working. Databases go under regular maintenance and are down at times. Sometimes things straight up aren't working statewide (California) and it may take a few days to fix it. It's times like these that hard copies of your documents are needed. Also not having documents prolongs the stop by requiring the officers to search databases to make sure everything matches, i.e. your picture. Traffic stops are dangerous, especially when it comes to passing motorists trying to see what is going on. Every minute faster the stop can be greatly enhances the safety of the officer and driver. ",
"A few months back i got pulled over for the exhaust. I forgot my license at home so he looked up my info I gave him and gave me a citation for not having my license on me. It was a $289 ticket for not carrying a fucking plastic rectangle. There was no reason to even give me a ticket over something that petty, let alone something they could and did easily look up.",
"I have worked a bit with my state's legislature and I can tell you that they wouldn't allow that because there are nutters that think this leads to some conspiracy by the U.N. or Belgium or maybe getting tattoo of the beast number or some other crazyness. Those nutters are 4/4 voters - they vote in every primary. Because gerrymandering to favor incumbents and because normal people don't vote in primaries, the nutters influence is strong. So no techie ID system.",
"We have the registration bit in Australia. They run the license plate on their devices to find out if you're up to date on registration and such. They also use it to track you down for other stuff\n\nWith the license thing, you have to carry it but if you're not you just take the ticket and your license to a police station ",
"you dont. your country just needs to get up to date tech. our cop cars have cameras and in-car computers that simply scan the rego plate (tags in your country) and report if the vehicle is registered or not. they use OCR technology to scan every vehicle that drives past them, in both directions so if your car is unrego'd, expect the copper to pull up behind you as soon as you see one.\n\nEdit: Rego plate not license plate ;)",
"So you want to hand your unlocked phone to a government official to then sit in their car with for 5 - 10 minutes? No thanks.",
"So what if you're driving in another country and you don't have data. How are you going to access your license then. Better just to have a physical card.",
"My insurance company didn't offer physical cards when I first joined them. I guess they send out new ones in mass quantities? So I only had a screenshot of my digital card that was sent in a email. We got pulled over coming back from vacation and it seemed to work just fine. They generally just check the date to make sure it's valid.\n\nNow the ID thing is probably to protect your identity. People can easily steal information from your phone especially if you're one of those people that leave Bluetooth and wifi on 24/7 even when not using the he service. \n\nPersonally I don't mind having to carry a ID all the time. It how come we have 4 types of ID cards in the US? That's the annoying part. ",
"I have all my car info (insurance,registration,yadda yadda) all on my phone and when cops pull me over they always ask for it as they should and I just hand them my phone. Never had a problem with it until some old geezer told me I needed paper to which I told him I didn't and he tried to ding me for no proof of insurance. Even the judge just looked at the cop like... \"are you serious?\" ",
"I haven't seen it mentioned yet so I'll add this. You're required to carry your driver's license, registration, and insurance because if you are in an accident, people need to be able to identify who you are whether you're alive or dead. If it's \"in your phone\" then people can't get access to it. If you hit someone with your car then you are required to exchange information and having your phone not work isn't an acceptable excuse to not provide your information.",
"Driver's licenses need to work in under all conditions:\n\n- Places with no connectivity.\n- After being exposed to rough conditions (underwater, extreme heat/cold).\n- Be time convenient (imagine the line at an event if everyone had to unlock their phone to show ID).\n- When the device may be otherwise incapacitated (battery's dead, etc).\n- When the owner may be otherwise incapacitated (you're dead, etc).\n\nIt's a source of revenue. If you get stopped without your DL that's an opportunity to charge you a fee. If you lose it, you got it... fee.\n\nFinally, it's hard for the government to standardize something like a DL that may be valid for much longer than you would typically hold on to a phone.\n\nSo, you end up with a little plastic card whose workings are tightly controlled, only requires enough light to be read, and is pretty much indestructible from any event that would not require dental records to make a positive use identification.",
"I live in Australia in Queensland. \nWe only have to bring our licence, our registration and insurance are paid as the same payment (insurance is only for 3rd party) and is checked using our registration plate. We won't be fined if we get pulled up without our licence on us, just police will warn to carry always. We usually just bring our license with us anyway though as it is used for I.D for everything. So it's just in our wallet/purse as a rule. \n\n",
"Top responses are missing the important bits.\n\nI'd should come down to three different things. Something you know, something you have, and something you are.\n\nYou HAVE a licensed, you KNOW what's on it and about the car, and you ARE the person in the picture.\n\nUsing a phone as an Id pic is bad because Photoshop and apps make it impossible to tell what is being shown is authentic. A moderately hard to produce physical card is better to HAVE.\n\n",
"In Australia we don't have to carry anything , though most people will have their license on hand. Some police cars are equipped with cameras that automatically run the plates of any car that comes into view for insurance etc. Have a friend driving to the R.T.A to put in his paper work and was pulled over 3 times on a 20min drive. ",
"Here in NSW, Australia, when a vehicle is registered with the authorities - which is mandatory if it is to be driven on public roads - it also has to have current 3rd party insurance to protect at least the other party if injured in an accident.\nBoth of these details are linked in with the NSW Police who have the ability to check if a vehicle is registered and insured within seconds.\nIn fact, many of our Highway Patrol Vehicles (specially modified high performance sedans) have the ability to continually scan license plates whilst in motion and alert the officers on-board of an unregistered vehicle.\n\nIn regards to the driver's license, all police vehicles have the capability to lookup a license holder on the system, but by law all drivers are required to carry their license on their person when driving as a form of identification and license permissions (eg. a class C only license holder cannot drive a truck or ride a motorcycle, or a learner/provisional license holder cannot travel at certain speeds and have a zero PCA limit). \nCertain tech enthusiasts have suggested embedding this data into a microchipped implant though - it hasn't been ruled out...",
"The cloud, as you call it, is expensive and barely reliable enough for government services. To universally house data for 300 million citizens requires a rather large mound of hard drives that need to all be working together, which costs quite a bit in terms of setup and electricity, in addition to tape backups and an excellent security system to prevent identity theft. \n\nGranted, it's more efficient than paper, but you'd also have to get every state together to merge all of their data or, even better, abandon state identity issuing systems and rely on the federal government. (GLHF) ",
"In India, the government has launched an app called digilocker which allows you to download your license and registration directly from the government servers. It is considered equivalent to carrying a physical copy. Times sure are changing. ",
"I think it should be tied to your licence plate. \n\nAlso, ive read that in some states, you dont actually need to carry the card. Ill try to find a source",
"Having the technology doesn't mean it works. I had an ordeal this year Texas where I was denied renewal of my license due to \"failure to appear\" court charges. The problem was these \"court charges\" magically appeared on my record and were dated 1999. I was born in 1987, so these \"failure to appear\" charges were from when I was 12 years old. Oh and they were in a city I had never been to. \n\nApparently the issue was that Texas reuses suspended drivers license #'s and I got someone else's # when I turned 16. Fast forward 15 years and that person tried to renew at the same time as me causing their criminal record added to my account. I had even called Omnibase who runs the software for Texas DL #'s and they told me that I had warrants for my arrest and that I would have to talk to the police/court. Turns out they were either lying or incompetent. \n\nIn a separate instance I was almost arrested at my apartment by a warrant officer who mistakenly came after me instead of someone with the same first and last name. \n\nI don't really have much faith in these systems. ",
"Aussie here (Sydney) , our police here have definitely embraced the technology, all we have to do is pass them by on a highway and their cameras can spot our car plates and check if registered or if the owner has anything outstanding even while moving, takes them a matter of seconds. It's become there favorite source of fines as when caught the fine is approx $900, not sure why your law enforcement wouldn't want something like this",
"Dispatch here.\n\nIf the name isn't given to us exactly as listed, often the return won't show. That leaves you on the side of the road trying to prove you're valid without any documentation that you are if we can't find your return with what's given. \n\nComplicating matters even more, a driver's license isn't federal. If I run Michigan here in Georgia, I may not be able to get a return on name & DOB because Michigan requires your number. Not that my example is Michigan-specific, it varies from state to state what the requirements are. \n\nAs also mentioned already, it's money, money, money. In-car computers require money for installation, purchase, upkeep, individual NCIC/state terminal numbers for each terminal or user, same as access points that are inside dispatch offices, courthouses, law enforcement offices, etc. Each user has to be trained and certified. They have to be paid for training time. \n\nAlso, same as cell phones and Internet elsewhere doesn't always work, it's the same for car computers and air cards. \n\nThe considerations from beat officers seems to have been discussed here. \n\nBelieve me when I say that I think most law enforcement from all levels would enjoy that convenience. We have to have money to make it happen, and taxpayers are usually already mad that their money is misused or misallocated elsewhere, so getting them on board to provide more becomes a political pissing contest. \n\nAnother mention: if someone in the vehicle is being squirrely, I'd rather run it for my officer so he/she can protect himself/herself by keeping eyes on the vehicle's occupants. ",
"Actually we have enough technology where the officer can just run your plate and have everything he needs. If he had a body camera on, it could verify your identity by your face. ",
"In my experience, cops don't ask for registration. They ask for license and proof of insurance. \n\nI live in Oregon, for reference.",
"I have been driving for about 30 years now, and I'm still not quite sure by what they mean by \"registration\". I have always just handed my license and proof of insurance. I keep my tag tax receipt in my car as well, which I figure is what they mean by registration, but I don't understand why that is necessary since there is a sticker on my tag showing rather or not the tags are expired.",
"Even better, let's just have that implanted under our skin so we can get tagged and bagged. We're just property after all with the illusion of privacy.",
"The first and last time I got arrested, the police officer was trying to take my prints. However, it was a machine hooked up to a desktop computer and not the regular ink/paper he was obviously used to. \n\nHe had to call over two extra officers to figure it out. It was a check box they had forgotten to fill out before proceeding. Those three cops would need an awful amount of training to be able to access cloud storage. ",
"I scrolled halfway through the comments and am shocked no one mentioned this.\n\nThis will never happen because not having your license/registration etc *generates revenue.*\n\nMaking you register your car, renew your license is one revenue stream\n\nFailing to have those documents when you get pulled over is another (tickets are revenue generating)\n\nSpending *million of dollars* to make this easier hits States and municipalities twice because they are literally spending money to lose money. \n\nAll the privacy comments being posted, while valid, are not the types of things people think about at the local government level. Local governments look to cut costs or raise revenue. Conversion to digital documents for drivers does neither.",
"Because there is no incentive for the powers that be (government) to change it.\n\nThe police departments can't generate revenue ticketing for not having your license and/or registration on you if it's not required.\nThe sooner they make that a reality, the sooner the government loses that revenue stream.",
"I can actually answer this because I was pulled over and asked why forgetting my registration made the stop 20mins. Turns out cops are constantly accessing the databases that holds your info in their cloud. Having all your info on you literally cuts out timely lookups that are already clusterfucked and done wirelessly. Basically, its easier for everyone to just keep your info handy.",
"One reason I haven't seen yet: travel. Your drivers license is an international document that is valid in many countries throughout the world (some exceptions apply). Doing away with physical licenses would be a huge issue for officers in other countries, car rentals, etc.",
"Because believe it or not there are still some that don't have a phone, and phones' batteries run out",
"Have you ever seen a cop show? Criminals constantly give false info and have to check their systems, someone holding a card with their details makes it easier to identify people",
"All the comments here are about technology, and I'm sure this will get buried... However, CARRY YOUR LICENSE!\nIf you're in an accident and unconscious, the emergency personnel at the scene are looking for your license in order to figure out who you are. Your phone may be cracked or locked... No good.\n\nThey'll use that license once you're at the hospital to begin looking online and finding a way to contact someone close to you."
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5vz5bw | how does vx (the nerve agent that killed kim jong-nam) kill you even with a tiny amount applied to the skin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vz5bw/eli5_how_does_vx_the_nerve_agent_that_killed_kim/ | {
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"From Wikipedia:\n\n*\"VX blocks the action of acetylcholinesterase, resulting in an accumulation of acetylcholine in the space between the neuron and muscle cell, leading to uncontrolled muscle contraction. This results in initial violent contractions, followed by sustained supercontraction restricted to the subjunctional endplate sarcoplasm and prolonged depolarizing neuromuscular blockade, the latter resulting in flaccid paralysis of all the muscles in the body. Sustained paralysis of the diaphragm muscle causes death by asphyxiation.*\"\n\nTLDR? VX stops communication between your nerves and muscles, causing your diapraghm to stop working, which makes you suffocate.",
"May I rephrase? Why didn't this deadly poison kill the female assassins too? Why didn't they die from having it on their bare hands?"
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2jct7v | given hipaa and patient privacy, how do we know who the nurses are who have ebola? | Who released, or authorized the release of, that information? I mean yes, as soon as they started scrubbing down the apartments people would know who they were, but who made that knowledge official, and how is that legal under HIPPA? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jct7v/eli5given_hipaa_and_patient_privacy_how_do_we/ | {
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"Because it is in the public interest for it to be released, which is a valid exception to the rules.\n > **Who Can Look at and Receive Your Health Information**\n\n > The Privacy Rule sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive your health information\n\n > To make sure that your health information is protected in a way that does not interfere with your health care, your information can be used and shared:\n\n > * To protect the public's health, such as by reporting when the flu is in your area\n\n_URL_0_",
"* HIPAA has exemptions for public safety\n* HIPAA only applies to health care workers with access to your medical records...if a clever reporter found out some other way, they are free to divulge that information\n* even if someone violated HIPAA, once that information is out there, the press is free to report on it"
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dqleo5 | how do mirrors reflect everything at any angle and not just what's infront of it? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dqleo5/eli5_how_do_mirrors_reflect_everything_at_any/ | {
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"The angle that light hits the mirror at is the angle it leaves at. If you look at a mirror from a 45° angle, then you see what is at the mirror's other 45° angle. It's called the angle of incidence"
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3o0nzk | why doesn't anyone want to be speaker of the house? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o0nzk/eli5_why_doesnt_anyone_want_to_be_speaker_of_the/ | {
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"There are lots of people who want to be Speaker of the House. The problem is getting 218 people to agree that a single person should be the Speaker.\n\nNobody wants to be called to a vote and not get enough votes. That would be a PR nightmare.",
"The tea party wing of the republican party is too large to ignore but republicans outside of that are loathe to team up with democrats to get the votes needed because then they'd be in the exact situation that John Boehner found himself in all too often. So there aren't enough moderate republicans to push things through. ",
"Because there are really 3 political parties operating in the US currently. The tea party republicans, and traditional republicans. Both groups call themselves republicans but neither group wants to cede control of the whole party to the other group.\n\nSo the traditional republicans don't want the speaker to be a Tea party member, and vice versa. The democrats also get to vote on who becomes speaker.\n\nThe traditional republicans could likely get a \"win\" here because the democrats fear the tea party significantly more. So they could offer up a moderate republican as speaker and win by using democratic votes. \n\nBut that would be an embarrassment for the republican party as a whole. They're a majority and can't even elect a speaker without using democratic votes. And to have a significant wing of their own party opposed to the speaker would be a big embarrassment. \n\nThe tea party can't rely on Democratic votes because there are no moderate members of the tea party, so if the transitional republicans vote with the dems, there's no way the tea party candidate wins.\n\nBoehner was a VERY republican republican. So he had enough appeal to the extreme tea party candidates that he got elected without democratic support. But his insistence that government should actually govern is a big problem for those tea party candidates.\n\nIt all comes from the fact that many of the tea party candidates were elected on an \"I'm going to go to Washington and fuck shit up\" platform. The voters in those districts distrust and dislike the federal government so much that they don't want their elected representative to actually govern, they want them to rip it all down.\n\nThe traditional republicans DO want to govern, they just disagree with the dems on how that should be done. The tea party members don't really think the federal government should do any governing at all. \n\nThe tea party people don't have the votes to actually make their ultmit ajanda happen, the downsizing of the american government. But they have enough votes to prevent anyone else from doing anything at all. So that's what they've done.\n\nNo one wants to be speaker because no one feels like they can negotiate that divide and actually come out on top. Everyone sees it as a lose, lose kind of job where even if you do it right half your people are going to hate your guts. ",
"The GOP house is a mess right now. There's a few dozen members or so who are pretty hardcore tea-party types that are pretty much demanding that congress somehow force Obama to do things he's never going to do, like repeal the ACA. \n\nWhoever the new Speaker is, he/she is going to get constant pressure from those people to take extreme measures (Like government shutdowns, or refusing to raise the debt limit) in order to pressure Obama to do stuff that he's not going to do. The GOP doesn't even have a supermajority in the Senate, so most of this stuff won't ever even get to Obama's desk. \n\nThe end result is that this fringe contingent is not going to get what they want (because it's just plain not possible considering the current dynamics of the government), and best case they're going to blame the Speaker, make his life miserable, and eventually chase him out just like they did with John Boehner. Worst case they'll actually manage to force another shut-down, or even worse a debt-default, and whoever's Speaker is going to have to deal with having that mess as part of their legacy. \n\nBasically, anybody who takes the job is going to be in a really crummy situation with no good options. ",
"More abstractly...why does anyone choose to hold a high ranking public office? Who wants to deal with the scrutiny of public and private life such an office entails? People do want to hold office and we need to examine possible reasons why they wish to do so before voting for them. I think many such people are egomaniacs or lovers of power...those are people we should avoid at all costs!",
"At the value voters summit, a republican gathering for republicans, when it was announced that Boehner was resigning there was a cheer that went through the hall. Basically the fans of the party booed their own speaker of the house because he wouldn't blow up the government. The speaker position is in a terrible position right now. The base of the party is convinced that all that the republicans need to do is fight and people will begin to see that they are right and Obama's evil spell on America can be broken. (much like fans of losing football teams think that starting the backup quarterback will 'turn it around'. The politicians know that this isn't true. So you have situations like every one that's come up in the last 4 years. The base wants the house republicans to play brinksmanship with the democrats ON EVERY ISSUE, EVERY TIME, while the politicians don't want to risk their careers on government shutdowns over the debt ceiling AND every judicial nominee. So you have what we have here now, a party that is eating itself.\n\nTL;DR the base and the politicians have different ideas about how to keep the republicans in power.",
"Nobody wants to be Speaker because the GOP has built it's platform on the idea that Government is totally incompetent. This is why the recent Congress was the most unproductive in history. The new Speaker will face the same obstructionist A-holes that WANT to shut down the Government. Who would want that job?"
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jwc2x | calculus derivatives | I'd like to know as much as possible about derivatives; from how they are solved to what are their applications. Thx in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jwc2x/eli5_calculus_derivatives/ | {
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"If you actually want to know *as much as possible* about derivatives, you're in the wrong place. But I'll explain the concept LY5. (and let someone else do the math part if they want.)\n\nA derivative tells you how fast something is changing. It's a number telling you a *rate of change*.\n\nLet's say we're driving down the road in a car. At 5 o'clock we are at mile marker 10, and at 5:01 we are at mile marker 11. Our position on the road was 10 at time 5:00, and it was 11 at time 5:01. So how much did our position change? It changed by one mile in one minute. So, we were moving at 60 miles per hour.\n\nThat's why we say that velocity (or speed in a car) is the *derivative* of position. If you took a graph with position on the y-axis and velocity on the x-axis, you would see that, at time 5:00, we were at position 10, and at time 5:01 (one unit to the right), we were at position 11 (one unit upward). So if we drew a line from the first point to the second, it would look like this:\n \n 12 |\n |\n |\n 11 | o\n | /\n | /\n | /\n 10 | o\n -------------------------\n 5:00 5:01 5:02 ...\n\nThis line tells us our **position** over time. At 5:00, we were at marker 10; at 5:01, we were at marker 11, and so on.\n\nAnd so, we can ask, what's the *slope* of that line? It goes up by one unit and over by one unit. So for every one (mile) it goes up, it goes one (minute) to the right. So the slope is **1 mile/minute**, which is the derivative of our position.\n\nHere's some extra food for thought: When you step on the gas pedal of your car, the car speeds up, right? So say you're going 60 mph when you hit the gas, hard, and in two seconds, you've gone up to 70 mph. So in those two seconds, your *velocity* has changed by 10 miles per hour. So what is the rate of change of your velocity? It changed by 5 miles per hour each second. (It did this for the two seconds you hit the gas, making a total change of 10 miles per hour -- from 60 up to 70.) So your *acceleration* -- the derivative of velocity -- was: (5 miles per hour) per second. Just like velocity is the derivative of position, acceleration is the derivative of velocity.",
"I'll try my hand at the same analogy as bo1024.\n\nIf you are in a car you can measure the distance you have gone by using your odometer. Let say you leave for your friend's house at 1:00 and arrive at 3:00. Your odometer started at 1000 and ended at 1020. By subtracting your two odometer measurements you can get the distance you have traveled (20 miles).\n\nYou can then divide by the difference in time to get the average speed over the entire trip ( 20 miles / 2 hours = 10mph ).\n\nLets say you weren't satisfied knowing the average speed over the trip and you wanted to know **exactly** how fast you were going halfway through your trip at 2:00. Luckily you remember your odometer was 1010 at 1:59 and 1011 at 2:01. You could do the same calculation and get (1011 miles - 1010 miles) / ( 2 minutes ) = .5 miles per minute = 30 miles per hour.\n\nThis answer is a better guess at your speed at 2:00 than your previous calculation because the range of time is lower, but it is still just an average speed over two minutes. To know **exactly** what your speedometer was reading at 2:00 you would have to have an almost infinitely small time range centered at 2:00.\n\nThis is the concept of a derivative. You can take a function ( your car's odometer reading at a certain time ), a parameter to that function (time), and produce another function that tells you how much the function was changing relative to your parameter ( miles per hour at a certain time ).\n\nI'm assuming you are taking your first few weeks of calculus in freshman year of college or senior year of high school. You will be using the concept of derivatives in your physics classes to find the average rate of change between two data points in your labs, and to find an equation that describes the rate of change of another equation.\n\nThe steps to find the derivative of any function will take up a few chapters of your textbook, but if you are curious the procedure to find the derivative of a polynomial is easy to do and understand.",
"Derivatives are rates of change.\n\nEverything else about them is real calculus and beyond the bounds of this forum, though definitely interesting and worth your time. Good luck.",
"Really easy!\n\nSay you got a line. y = 3x + 2. What's the slope? If you said 3, you remember middle school algebra. If you didn't, you should go back and learn it. Any four-year-old should know this, and as you are five, you should DEFINITELY know this. Anyway.\n\nSay you have a *curve* instead of a line, like y = x^2. What's the slope? Well, there isn't one! It's a curve! But at any particular point on the curve, you can draw a line that just barely touches it and doesn't cross it (with some exceptions, but that's later). THAT line has a slope. At x = 0, for example, the curve y = x^2 is flat, so the slope is 0. At x = 1, though, the slope is 2, and at x = -3, the slope is -6. Actually, whatever x is, the slope is 2x. We call 2x the derivative of x^2.\n\nIt's much easier to do this using pictures. Go to _URL_0_ and look at some there, because that will help you.\n\nNow, you want to know how to take a derivative, right? This is called differentiating, NOT \"deriving\". Well, if you have a polynomial, where each term is something like ax^k, it's really easy to take the derivative: the derivative of x^n is nx^(n-1). And derivatives add, so the derivative of x^2 is 2x and the derivative of x^3 is 3x^2, so the derivative of 5x^2 - 4x^3 is 10x - 12x^2. Simple!\n\nThere are also a whole bunch of rules. If f(x) is the function, f'(x) is the derivative, or you could write it df/dx, or (d/dx)f. If you want to take the derivative at x = 1, then you'd do f'(1) or (df/dx)|_1 (that's a long vertical line with a 1 at the bottom, or an x = 1 if there are many variables). If you have some function f(x,y), you can also take a derivative of just x or just y, but that's multivariable calculus and that's LY12. Anyway.\n\nHere are some of those rules, where f and g are functions, x is the variable, and everything else is a number:\n\n(af + bg)' = af' + bg' (easy)\n(fg)' = f'g + fg' (multiplication rule, it's not obvious)\n(f(g))' = f'(g)g' (chain rule)\n(f/g)' = (f'g - fg')/g^2 (quotient rule)\n\nSome common derivatives:\n\n(d/dx)ax^n = anx^(n-1) (polynomials; this applies to negative n, too, but remember that if n = -1, then n-1 = -2)\n(d/dx)ax = a (special case for a line -- remember that the derivative is the slope)\n(d/dx)a = 0 (derivative of a constant is 0, since the slope is 0)\n(d/dx)sin(x) = cos(x)\n(d/dx)cos(x) = -sin(x) (to differentiate the other trig functions, just use the rules)\n(d/dx)e^x = e^x\n(d/dx)ln(x) = 1/x\n\nIf you go to _URL_0_, you'll see a lot more examples and practice problems.\n\nWhat are derivatives *for*? Well, lots of stuff! First of all, the derivative has a formal definition:\n\nf'(x) = lim (f(x + h) - f(x))/h as h goes to 0. What does that mean? It means this: for a very small change in x, what is the very small change that happens in f(x)? If y = 2x, then if x becomes bigger by some tiny number h, y becomes bigger by 2h. So the derivative is (2h)/h = 2. If y = x^2, if x becomes bigger by h, y becomes (x + h)^2 = x^2 + 2xh + h^2, so it becomes bigger by 2xh + h^2. So the derivative is (2xh + h^2)/h = 2x + h, but since h is infinitely tiny -- we're taking the limit as h goes to 0 -- that's just 2x.\n\nThis means that whenever we're talking about tiny changes, derivatives are important, since they tell you how one thing changes when another thing changes. A differential equation is an equation where you have some equation involving derivatives of a function and you're trying to discover the original function. The wave equation, the heat equation, the equations of fluids, and pretty much everything else used in physics are differential equations.\n\nDerivatives are also useful to optimize something. Look at any curve. Any curve whatsoever. Your roll of adhesive tape, or a can, or the blades of your fan, or anything, so long as it's smooth -- no corners. Look at the lowest point on that curve. If you drew a line that just touched it at that point, without crossing the curve, wouldn't that line be horizontal? That is, with slope 0? The highest and lowest points on a curve have derivative 0 (Fermat knew this even before Newton invented calculus). So if you take a function and set the derivative to 0, you'll find one of the highest or lowest points. Of course, there could be some point that's higher or lower somewhere else -- a peak is the highest point of the mountain, but unless it's Everest, it's not the highest point in the world -- but it's still helpful to know all the points where the derivative is 0.\n\nOf course, sometimes you know the derivative but want to find what it's a derivative of. Maybe you know f'(x) = 2x but you want to know what f(x) is. Except that you know it's x^2, right? WRONG. It could be x^2 + 1, since the derivative of a constant (1) is 0! It could be x^2 + C, where C is any number at all. That's called an antiderivative, or an integral. And we're not going into those for now. (:",
"Others have the solving figured out alright. Just want to add this really quick: \n\nMost of the time, you'll be taking derivatives with respect to time, like dx/dt, where dx is the change in position, and dt is the change in time.\n\nI'm going to give you a common everyday application:\n\nElectricity! You're using it right now to look at the photons coming out of your computer screen! (My example specifically refers to DC electricity, as that's much simpler)\n\nAlright. So electricity is simply moving lines of electrons. Each electron (in a battery for example) moves from the place with higher amounts of electrons (+ terminal) to the place with the lower amount of electrons (- terminal). This is obvious, like if you broke open a dam, the water would all flow out to the place where there is less water, until the water lever was equal everywhere, at which point it would stop flowing.\n\nElectrons are everywhere. Electricity is simply the phenomenon when electrons move. Electricity in wires isn't like a common garden hose. Instead, Imagine that the hose were filled with jello. When you pump more jello into one end, then the jello that's already inside gets squeezed out of the other end. Now: Hose=wire, and jello=electrons and the jello popping out=electricity. If you had a light bulb connected to the end of the wire, it would would get electrons pushed through it (and out the other wire back to the - terminal)\n\nBut I digress. Each electron flows out of the + and into the -. Each electron has a given charge, called the elementary charge. Now units of charge are called [Coulombs](_URL_2_). 1 electron has a charge of [negative 1.602176565\\(35\\)×10^−19 coulombs](_URL_0_) (really small!). That means that in 1 coulomb, there are 6.24150965(16)×10^18 electrons. If you picked up that many electrons with a magic tweezer or something, you would pick up a coulomb. Now say you take all of those electrons through a doorway in your house. If you took all those electrons through in exactly 1 second, that would be equal to [1 Ampere \\(Amp\\)](_URL_1_). If you took less electrons through in that same amount of time, then you would have less amps. But what if you had more electrons in more time? How much more of each? This can get complicated quickly. But that's when derivatives come in handy! If you take 62% of the electrons past a given point (your doorway) in 2 seconds, then the equation would be as follows:\n\n 0.62 Coulomb / 2 Seconds = dx/dt\n\n 1 Coulomb / 1 Second = 1 Amp\n\nDoing the math, I got 0.31 Amps. The unit of amps deals with 2 factors: Number one: how many electrons (aka coulombs) are flowing past a given point (this is instantaneous!) and number two: how quickly they do that. Amps, also commonly referred to as current, are literally just a measurement of how many electrons are passing a certain point at a certain instant. In the real world, dx is small, and lim dt - > 0.\n\nSo the instantaneous change in electrons (measured in coulombs) divided by lim t- > 0 is current. I'd say that's a pretty real world application...\n\nIf you have more questions or I need to clear something up, lemme know.",
"If you actually want to know *as much as possible* about derivatives, you're in the wrong place. But I'll explain the concept LY5. (and let someone else do the math part if they want.)\n\nA derivative tells you how fast something is changing. It's a number telling you a *rate of change*.\n\nLet's say we're driving down the road in a car. At 5 o'clock we are at mile marker 10, and at 5:01 we are at mile marker 11. Our position on the road was 10 at time 5:00, and it was 11 at time 5:01. So how much did our position change? It changed by one mile in one minute. So, we were moving at 60 miles per hour.\n\nThat's why we say that velocity (or speed in a car) is the *derivative* of position. If you took a graph with position on the y-axis and velocity on the x-axis, you would see that, at time 5:00, we were at position 10, and at time 5:01 (one unit to the right), we were at position 11 (one unit upward). So if we drew a line from the first point to the second, it would look like this:\n \n 12 |\n |\n |\n 11 | o\n | /\n | /\n | /\n 10 | o\n -------------------------\n 5:00 5:01 5:02 ...\n\nThis line tells us our **position** over time. At 5:00, we were at marker 10; at 5:01, we were at marker 11, and so on.\n\nAnd so, we can ask, what's the *slope* of that line? It goes up by one unit and over by one unit. So for every one (mile) it goes up, it goes one (minute) to the right. So the slope is **1 mile/minute**, which is the derivative of our position.\n\nHere's some extra food for thought: When you step on the gas pedal of your car, the car speeds up, right? So say you're going 60 mph when you hit the gas, hard, and in two seconds, you've gone up to 70 mph. So in those two seconds, your *velocity* has changed by 10 miles per hour. So what is the rate of change of your velocity? It changed by 5 miles per hour each second. (It did this for the two seconds you hit the gas, making a total change of 10 miles per hour -- from 60 up to 70.) So your *acceleration* -- the derivative of velocity -- was: (5 miles per hour) per second. Just like velocity is the derivative of position, acceleration is the derivative of velocity.",
"I'll try my hand at the same analogy as bo1024.\n\nIf you are in a car you can measure the distance you have gone by using your odometer. Let say you leave for your friend's house at 1:00 and arrive at 3:00. Your odometer started at 1000 and ended at 1020. By subtracting your two odometer measurements you can get the distance you have traveled (20 miles).\n\nYou can then divide by the difference in time to get the average speed over the entire trip ( 20 miles / 2 hours = 10mph ).\n\nLets say you weren't satisfied knowing the average speed over the trip and you wanted to know **exactly** how fast you were going halfway through your trip at 2:00. Luckily you remember your odometer was 1010 at 1:59 and 1011 at 2:01. You could do the same calculation and get (1011 miles - 1010 miles) / ( 2 minutes ) = .5 miles per minute = 30 miles per hour.\n\nThis answer is a better guess at your speed at 2:00 than your previous calculation because the range of time is lower, but it is still just an average speed over two minutes. To know **exactly** what your speedometer was reading at 2:00 you would have to have an almost infinitely small time range centered at 2:00.\n\nThis is the concept of a derivative. You can take a function ( your car's odometer reading at a certain time ), a parameter to that function (time), and produce another function that tells you how much the function was changing relative to your parameter ( miles per hour at a certain time ).\n\nI'm assuming you are taking your first few weeks of calculus in freshman year of college or senior year of high school. You will be using the concept of derivatives in your physics classes to find the average rate of change between two data points in your labs, and to find an equation that describes the rate of change of another equation.\n\nThe steps to find the derivative of any function will take up a few chapters of your textbook, but if you are curious the procedure to find the derivative of a polynomial is easy to do and understand.",
"Derivatives are rates of change.\n\nEverything else about them is real calculus and beyond the bounds of this forum, though definitely interesting and worth your time. Good luck.",
"Really easy!\n\nSay you got a line. y = 3x + 2. What's the slope? If you said 3, you remember middle school algebra. If you didn't, you should go back and learn it. Any four-year-old should know this, and as you are five, you should DEFINITELY know this. Anyway.\n\nSay you have a *curve* instead of a line, like y = x^2. What's the slope? Well, there isn't one! It's a curve! But at any particular point on the curve, you can draw a line that just barely touches it and doesn't cross it (with some exceptions, but that's later). THAT line has a slope. At x = 0, for example, the curve y = x^2 is flat, so the slope is 0. At x = 1, though, the slope is 2, and at x = -3, the slope is -6. Actually, whatever x is, the slope is 2x. We call 2x the derivative of x^2.\n\nIt's much easier to do this using pictures. Go to _URL_0_ and look at some there, because that will help you.\n\nNow, you want to know how to take a derivative, right? This is called differentiating, NOT \"deriving\". Well, if you have a polynomial, where each term is something like ax^k, it's really easy to take the derivative: the derivative of x^n is nx^(n-1). And derivatives add, so the derivative of x^2 is 2x and the derivative of x^3 is 3x^2, so the derivative of 5x^2 - 4x^3 is 10x - 12x^2. Simple!\n\nThere are also a whole bunch of rules. If f(x) is the function, f'(x) is the derivative, or you could write it df/dx, or (d/dx)f. If you want to take the derivative at x = 1, then you'd do f'(1) or (df/dx)|_1 (that's a long vertical line with a 1 at the bottom, or an x = 1 if there are many variables). If you have some function f(x,y), you can also take a derivative of just x or just y, but that's multivariable calculus and that's LY12. Anyway.\n\nHere are some of those rules, where f and g are functions, x is the variable, and everything else is a number:\n\n(af + bg)' = af' + bg' (easy)\n(fg)' = f'g + fg' (multiplication rule, it's not obvious)\n(f(g))' = f'(g)g' (chain rule)\n(f/g)' = (f'g - fg')/g^2 (quotient rule)\n\nSome common derivatives:\n\n(d/dx)ax^n = anx^(n-1) (polynomials; this applies to negative n, too, but remember that if n = -1, then n-1 = -2)\n(d/dx)ax = a (special case for a line -- remember that the derivative is the slope)\n(d/dx)a = 0 (derivative of a constant is 0, since the slope is 0)\n(d/dx)sin(x) = cos(x)\n(d/dx)cos(x) = -sin(x) (to differentiate the other trig functions, just use the rules)\n(d/dx)e^x = e^x\n(d/dx)ln(x) = 1/x\n\nIf you go to _URL_0_, you'll see a lot more examples and practice problems.\n\nWhat are derivatives *for*? Well, lots of stuff! First of all, the derivative has a formal definition:\n\nf'(x) = lim (f(x + h) - f(x))/h as h goes to 0. What does that mean? It means this: for a very small change in x, what is the very small change that happens in f(x)? If y = 2x, then if x becomes bigger by some tiny number h, y becomes bigger by 2h. So the derivative is (2h)/h = 2. If y = x^2, if x becomes bigger by h, y becomes (x + h)^2 = x^2 + 2xh + h^2, so it becomes bigger by 2xh + h^2. So the derivative is (2xh + h^2)/h = 2x + h, but since h is infinitely tiny -- we're taking the limit as h goes to 0 -- that's just 2x.\n\nThis means that whenever we're talking about tiny changes, derivatives are important, since they tell you how one thing changes when another thing changes. A differential equation is an equation where you have some equation involving derivatives of a function and you're trying to discover the original function. The wave equation, the heat equation, the equations of fluids, and pretty much everything else used in physics are differential equations.\n\nDerivatives are also useful to optimize something. Look at any curve. Any curve whatsoever. Your roll of adhesive tape, or a can, or the blades of your fan, or anything, so long as it's smooth -- no corners. Look at the lowest point on that curve. If you drew a line that just touched it at that point, without crossing the curve, wouldn't that line be horizontal? That is, with slope 0? The highest and lowest points on a curve have derivative 0 (Fermat knew this even before Newton invented calculus). So if you take a function and set the derivative to 0, you'll find one of the highest or lowest points. Of course, there could be some point that's higher or lower somewhere else -- a peak is the highest point of the mountain, but unless it's Everest, it's not the highest point in the world -- but it's still helpful to know all the points where the derivative is 0.\n\nOf course, sometimes you know the derivative but want to find what it's a derivative of. Maybe you know f'(x) = 2x but you want to know what f(x) is. Except that you know it's x^2, right? WRONG. It could be x^2 + 1, since the derivative of a constant (1) is 0! It could be x^2 + C, where C is any number at all. That's called an antiderivative, or an integral. And we're not going into those for now. (:",
"Others have the solving figured out alright. Just want to add this really quick: \n\nMost of the time, you'll be taking derivatives with respect to time, like dx/dt, where dx is the change in position, and dt is the change in time.\n\nI'm going to give you a common everyday application:\n\nElectricity! You're using it right now to look at the photons coming out of your computer screen! (My example specifically refers to DC electricity, as that's much simpler)\n\nAlright. So electricity is simply moving lines of electrons. Each electron (in a battery for example) moves from the place with higher amounts of electrons (+ terminal) to the place with the lower amount of electrons (- terminal). This is obvious, like if you broke open a dam, the water would all flow out to the place where there is less water, until the water lever was equal everywhere, at which point it would stop flowing.\n\nElectrons are everywhere. Electricity is simply the phenomenon when electrons move. Electricity in wires isn't like a common garden hose. Instead, Imagine that the hose were filled with jello. When you pump more jello into one end, then the jello that's already inside gets squeezed out of the other end. Now: Hose=wire, and jello=electrons and the jello popping out=electricity. If you had a light bulb connected to the end of the wire, it would would get electrons pushed through it (and out the other wire back to the - terminal)\n\nBut I digress. Each electron flows out of the + and into the -. Each electron has a given charge, called the elementary charge. Now units of charge are called [Coulombs](_URL_2_). 1 electron has a charge of [negative 1.602176565\\(35\\)×10^−19 coulombs](_URL_0_) (really small!). That means that in 1 coulomb, there are 6.24150965(16)×10^18 electrons. If you picked up that many electrons with a magic tweezer or something, you would pick up a coulomb. Now say you take all of those electrons through a doorway in your house. If you took all those electrons through in exactly 1 second, that would be equal to [1 Ampere \\(Amp\\)](_URL_1_). If you took less electrons through in that same amount of time, then you would have less amps. But what if you had more electrons in more time? How much more of each? This can get complicated quickly. But that's when derivatives come in handy! If you take 62% of the electrons past a given point (your doorway) in 2 seconds, then the equation would be as follows:\n\n 0.62 Coulomb / 2 Seconds = dx/dt\n\n 1 Coulomb / 1 Second = 1 Amp\n\nDoing the math, I got 0.31 Amps. The unit of amps deals with 2 factors: Number one: how many electrons (aka coulombs) are flowing past a given point (this is instantaneous!) and number two: how quickly they do that. Amps, also commonly referred to as current, are literally just a measurement of how many electrons are passing a certain point at a certain instant. In the real world, dx is small, and lim dt - > 0.\n\nSo the instantaneous change in electrons (measured in coulombs) divided by lim t- > 0 is current. I'd say that's a pretty real world application...\n\nIf you have more questions or I need to clear something up, lemme know."
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1lkj4c | why is fishing more accepted than hunting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lkj4c/why_is_fishing_more_accepted_than_hunting/ | {
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"I think this a matter of opinion. I'd like to mention what I've heard about this topic though. \nFirst, fish aren't mammals. I once had a couple friends argue that they would feel bad for a hunted dolphin and not hunted shark strictly because a shark isn't a mammal. Seemed like an arbitrary reason to me because they're both fairly large, grey, live in the ocean, and eat other animals. \n\nMy personal opinion is because fish aren't typically considered \"cute.\" I mean, when I think about land animals that are hunted (duck, moose, deer, and maybe wolves (do people hunt those?) they're all pretty cute to me. I don't fish, but fish aren't cute at all. I watched a video by Vsauce on YouTube (on phone so no links) stating that cuteness is a way for us to protect our young. Maybe the beauty of a land animal is something that makes us want to protect them. \n\nGood question. "
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1alm6h | the concept of social class in the us | The US and the rest of the world seem to have vastly different ideas about what constitutes 'middle class'. I've heard of people who's tiny houses are about to be foreclosed on because their two crappy minimum wage jobs behind a counter at their local Walmart and working in a shipping warehouse somewhere isn't enough to cover their mortgage.
In the UK, if you work a minimum wage job, you're almost certainly not middle class. If you can't live with financial security even in a tiny house, you're not middle class. You're working class. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just how the classes are defined.
I've never heard an American define themselves as working class. What's the deal? Even people in poverty, statistically speaking, call themselves middle class. How come? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1alm6h/eli5_the_concept_of_social_class_in_the_us/ | {
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"There isn't really a well defined definition of \"middle class\", but in general the phrase \"working class\" isn't used here very frequently, you're upper class, middle class, or possibly lower class, or poor.\n\nPoliticians constantly talk about how they want to do things \"for the middle class\" this makes people who probably shouldn't be defined that way think they are defined that way, and this goes in both directions, with rich people calling themselves \"middle class\" to relate with people who make 1/4 as much as them.",
"In the US, many think of the poor as being the people who live by just taking all the free money the government offers them. Thing is, very few of these people exist, because governments in the US don't offer much free money."
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f0csvm | why is it so hard for me to explain/teach concepts i'm familiar with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f0csvm/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_for_me_to_explainteach/ | {
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"When you're familiar with something and do it every day, you often don't even think about all the little things that go into it. For example, driving a car - you've probably done it for a long time. But can you recall if you put the key in the ignition before you put your seat belt on? What exactly do you do when you change lanes? You've done these things so many times it just becomes a subconscious process, so to break it down and teach it you have to really stop and think about what is really involved. \n\nThere may also be shortcuts or jargon thats just assumed is already known by people who do that thing all the time, but has to be taught to newcomers.",
"Not a professional by any means, but for me, I think the familiarity with a subject or process makes it more difficult in itself, because you understand it with ease, I tend to simplify the things when I explain them as if the person I'm telling has a same level of knowledge on the subject because it's easier for me to explain it on a technical level, when for them it's the first time and are probably trying to understand the entire concept all at once.\n\nThen they might not understand how certain words or concepts within the actual subject work, and need to know them as well, so you can't explain it as you know it, you have to breakdown every part and that makes it feel more difficult, if that makes sense.",
"knowledge of a subject is not the only thing needed to teach it. you also have to be able to break it down into its simplest forms and also have the ability to convey this in a way that others, who have little or no knowledge of it, can understand. that's is the tricky part. \n\nI've found that if I'm trying to teach something that i had a hard time learning it's easier, because i spent a lot of time with the simple parts. i have a much more difficult time teaching something that i picked up intuitively because, since it was so obvious to me, i seem to have skipped the basics and i feel that i lack the language to explain it simply.\n\nalways keep in mind that the people you're teaching don't know anything. that can make it easier."
]
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[],
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eke6s7 | why is it not possible to get a source code of a program/game if it's original is lost? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eke6s7/eli5_why_is_it_not_possible_to_get_a_source_code/ | {
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"It's happening because program is compiled to machine code. During compilation process most useful information for recreating original source code (class, method, variables names) is getting lost, additionally some compiler optimizations can drop some parts of code. Moreover in some programming languages (JS, Java) is common to use obfuscators to prevent distributable binaries be readable. Even if some methods of decompilation exists, produced code still need a lot of work to become somewhat readable and useful. Sometimes it's easier to recreate it again from scratch.",
"Much for the same reason if you lose a recipe having the resulting cake baked and ready to go generally isn't enough to reconstruct the method and ingredients. \n\nWhen the final program is built, the human readable source-code is compiled in to something the computer actually understands. Anything that isn't vital to that function, like comments, variable names, or superfluous structure that makes it comfortable for humans is discarded.\n\nAs such even if your decompile the program, you're going to get a source code that is *technically* human readable, but has none of the elements that humans put in to make the code easy to work with. You'd get *a* source, but it's not going to be fun or easy to work with.",
"Great question! Other comments referring to machine code are entirely correct, but I thought I'd expand on the explanation further, just because it is fun.\n\nThe are many programs that have different source code which produce the same machine code.\n\nImagine that you're taking fruits and vegetables as an input, and writing down their color as the output. \n\nTomato - > Red\n\nApple - > Red\n\nCarrot - > Orange\n\nOrange - > Orange\n\n\nSo the item on the left is your source code, and the item on the right is your machine code. If your machine code spells Red, you can't tell if the source code was the Apple or the Tomato, right?\n\nSince you're not literally 5 years old, here's a small example I put together for you. Take a look at this [screenshot](_URL_0_)\n\ntest1.cpp is the source code that uses a variable named i, while test2.cpp uses a variable named j. (Never mind what the code does, it is not important for this example.) test1.s is the disassembly and the machine code (that is, the output) generated from test1.cpp, and test2.s corresponds to test2.cpp. Note how the sources are different, but the outputs are the same. Given one of these .s files, test1.s or test2.s, without giving the name of the file to you, you wouldn't be able to tell if the source had an i or a j in it, so the source cannot be recovered from the machine code."
]
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[],
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"https://imgur.com/Vu0D443"
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5syzqz | why do all sci-fi space helmets now have ambient lights on the inside? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5syzqz/eli5_why_do_all_scifi_space_helmets_now_have/ | {
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"It's most likely just for cinematography's sake, it keeps the actors/actresses photogenic and easy to visually identify. It would unlikely ever be practical for the same reasons driving with your interior lights on is not practical.",
"Film is a visual medium. Actors act with their faces. So they want to make sure you as the viewer can see their face while they act. So they put lights in the helmet so you can see the actor's face.\n\nYou wouldn't want that in a real space helmet because it would be harder to see. Because the astronaut would be looking at the reflection of their face the whole time.",
"A dark mask expresses very little emotion, which is why a bad guy will generally have no light. If you're paying, let's say, Chris Hemsworth as your helmet wearing hero you're damn well going to show his face and get those tickets sold through a little ambient light. Kind of the same reason a dark room is sometimes showed as a blue ambient light because a fully dark room serves little purpise unless there's a jump scare coming."
]
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[],
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1x8q49 | how far back into history do living things have eye sight? what was the first living thing with "eyes"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x8q49/eli5_how_far_back_into_history_do_living_things/ | {
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"The first eyes evolved during the Cambrian (you may have heard of the Cambrian Explosion which was a time of rapid evolution) over 500 million years ago. At least the first that we know of. There's no evidence of any before the Cambrian and it's thought that the Cambrian Explosion was the result of an arms race over eyes. \n\nAs to the first living thing that has eyes....... that I don't know. "
]
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[]
] | ||
27v630 | taboo culture of tattoos in japan | Why are tattoos considered so bad in places like Japan?
Is it simply because Yakuza are the ones with a whole lot of them and dont want association or anything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27v630/eli5taboo_culture_of_tattoos_in_japan/ | {
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"I'm not sure it's tattoos in general, it's more an issue of gang/yakuza tattoos. Japanese culture is quite conservative about some things, and the general idea is that tattoo=yakuza=thug. I didn't have any problems when I was in Tokyo, but then I'm a white woman and obviously a foreigner, and not likely to be involved in a Japanese gang. \n\nHere's an article on the general attitude: _URL_0_",
"Yeah, the whole yakuza angle is much of it in recent times, but tattoos in Japan (I.e. Their own particular style of tattooing, irezumi) have throughout history been associated with criminality and the underclasses. Originally, tattoos of lines, circles, or dogs (among other things), were branded onto criminals to identify them. \n\nEven after this practice died out and tattoos garnered a more romantic image (lovers would get each other's names and the kanji for 'life' on them), in the late Tokugawa and well into the Meiji era (1800s-early 1900s), irezumi was seen as a degenerate practice that did not sit well with the cultural and political \"civilising\" reforms of the period, and was prohibited, forcing it underground. Irezumi is thus something often conducted out of the artist's home, and has a kind of inner circle prestige and often a taboo associated with it, hence the bans in some onsen and such. However, it seems that in recent times \"Western\" style parlours have sprung up and have much less stigma attached to them.\n\nSource: I did an essay on this last year in my Japanese class.\n",
"The Yakuza thing is true, and in the past tattoos were used to brand criminals. So, traditionally people with tattoos are criminals. However this is changed a lot. Many Japanese people have a tattoo as a fashion statement.\nOf course, upper class people tending to have less tattoos is not only a Japanese thing, so some people will still look down on it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://japandailypress.com/the-view-of-tattoos-in-japanese-society-295623/"
],
[],
[]
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55akb6 | how can a 9 year old child complete enough schoolwork, that they can then legitimately enroll in college? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55akb6/eli5_how_can_a_9_year_old_child_complete_enough/ | {
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"For these prodigy kids, they aren't going to school and sitting in class like most students. They have a private tutor and a custom curriculum to progress academically at an accelerated rate. As long as they can demonstrate that they understand the required material to pass a GED test, they'll be academically eligible to enroll in college. Colleges very much want individuals who are likely to become very bright and successful, so they are willing to enroll these kids with the hopes they may become rich and famous and donate back to the school."
]
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[]
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4j0ll6 | what was the evidence to justify brazil's presidential impeachment? why are there counter allegations of a coup? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j0ll6/eli5_what_was_the_evidence_to_justify_brazils/ | {
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"Crimes of fiscal responsibility (pedaladas fiscais, which is the delaying of the release of money to the public banks to cover the government programs, making it seem that the government is spending less than it is but raising the debt and making the banks spend their own money to cover the government expenses, which is against article 36 of the Law of Fiscal Responsibility). The government is saying its a coup because it should not be a crime because the previous administrations also did it before.",
"The executive branch is (probably) guilty of fiddling the figures to make the economics look better. If true this is actually grounds for impeachment under the Brazillian system but it's a bit of a technical/minor \"crime\" and is only the justification for the impeachment and not the real reason.\n\nIn reality it's due to the presidents massive unpopularity and poor performance, as well as the political aspirations of the opposition. They are using the technicality to get rid of the president.\n\nCoup is too strong a word imo since it is entirely operating within the legal framework of the constitution and it looks very likely that the legal justification for impeachment is there. But it's true that this legal justification is a bit of a fig leaf."
]
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[],
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5qqucz | when a new potus and his family move into the white house, how much can they change? how are the personal tastes of each president balanced with historic preservation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qqucz/eli5_when_a_new_potus_and_his_family_move_into/ | {
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"_URL_0_ says that \"Since the early 60s, each presidential administration has seen the White House as a kind of living museum, making changes to the decor and maintaining the building's structure and exterior, but making very limited alterations to the architecture and layout.\" Every president redecorates the Oval Office, although the general layout of the furniture has been pretty consistent since at least the early 60s.\n\nThe president often borrows many of their decorations from museums. The museums would presumably complain if the president ruined their paintings and statues. For other historical artifacts, each recent ex-president has a presidential library that collects items related to that president.\n\nThe most historically significant piece of traditional furniture in the White House is the \"Resolute Desk,\" which Presidents have used since 1880. If a president wanted to steal or set fire to the Resolute Desk, I can't figure out who would have the authority to stop him. There must be a bureaucrat somewhere in Washington D.C. who is responsible for taking care of things that \"belong\" to the White House instead of the president or the Smithsonian.",
"In addition to Todd math. There is a residential portion of the white house, which is not ceremonial, and I'd like a real home, and there is a lot of leeway in redecorating, and is generally updated about as often as your parents home or so, just updating the appliances and backsplash and paint, etc. \nAnd the recreation rooms, such as theater and bowling alley are changed by preference. \n\nThen the oval office is specifically redecorated and finished by each president to their own taste, including the rug. Some elements remain consistent, like the desk, but they're not required to. Art and the like, as Todd said, is borrowed from museums and such. \n\nAlso, a large portion of the white house, like the wings, are simply offices for staff. They're updated and redecorated as personally needs change, and are not historic, etc. \n\nThe parts that generally remain the same and are not changed aer the exteriors and the ceremonial rooms, like the blue room, and some historic rooms like the Lincoln bedroom. Same with outdoor spaces, ceremonial spaces, like the Rose garden remain mostly unchanged, but the rest is up for grabs. Obama added a swing set, a vegetable garden and a basketball court. \n\n\nOtherwise, things change as needed. ",
"There is really very little history in the interior of the White House other than furnishings and other portable objects. The building was completely gutted leaving only the exterior walls during the Truman administration.",
"NPR just did a [relevant story](_URL_0_) on this last week.\n\n\"...When it comes to the public spaces in the White House, the rules are different. In the early 1960s, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy helped bring some order to the process of how art should enter the White House and be paid for...\""
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"WhiteHouseMuseum.org"
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[],
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"http://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/510601240/how-a-work-of-art-makes-it-onto-the-wall-of-the-white-house"
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6njjci | what is the difference between seltzer water and sparkling water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6njjci/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_seltzer_water/ | {
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"Nowadays, nothing really. All those words (plus carbonated water, club soda, etc) are used fairly interchangeably to describe water with carbon dioxide dissolved in it (whether naturally or artificially).\n\nThe word seltzer comes from a particular brand of naturally-ocurring carbonated water from mineral springs in Germany: _URL_0_\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selters"
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4um2j5 | whirlpools in the ocean. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4um2j5/eli5_whirlpools_in_the_ocean/ | {
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"Press your hands against a ball and move your hands in opposing directions. The ball spins doesn't it? When two opposing currents run past each other, the water in between them is stuck there and \"spins\", producing ye olde whirlpool, in most cases. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
19xsye | why are prescription bottles always translucent orange with a white top? | Basically I'm asking who started this trend and if there is any reason for these specific colors. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19xsye/eli5_why_are_prescription_bottles_always/ | {
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"Certain \"colors\" of light that can harm certain medicines. This includes some colors people can't see, such as the ultra-violet light which gives you sunburn. The bottle's plastic is a mix between (A) letting people see inside and (B) blocking these harmful colors.\n\nIt's still a good idea to store most medicines in a cool dark place, rather than your windowsill.\n\nSee also: [Wikipedia: Prescription Bottle](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_bottle"
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wxtob | why are slick tires faster than ones with profiles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wxtob/eli5_why_are_slick_tires_faster_than_ones_with/ | {
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"text": [
"Since there aren't a bunch of grooves in slick tires, more rubber is in contact with the road. More rubber=more grip (when the road is dry), so if the tires are grippier, the car can go faster."
]
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2809p8 | why does it take more energy to cool than to heat if molecules with higher heat technically have higher levels of energy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2809p8/eli5why_does_it_take_more_energy_to_cool_than_to/ | {
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"Because heat energy always flows from a hotter object or material to a cooler object or material. To heat something, all you need to do is burn fuel or use an electric heater or some such thing; nearly all energy in physical processes ultimately becomes heat. To cool something, you need to extract heat from it. The heat that you extract is almost always too low-grade to be used for anything, so it's lost.",
"Because coolness is just the absence of heat. In other words, heat is the real thing.\n\n- When you are heating something you simply add energy until the desired temperature is achieved. Easy.\n\n- When you cool something, you have to take that heat and send it somewhere else. Hard.\n\nFor example, to cool your house your air-conditioner compresses gas which generates heat (dissipated into the atmosphere outside), the cooled gases are sent into your home where the hot air HEATS the cold lines. The process is repeated until - en essence - the heat from your home has been transferred into the outside air.\n\n- In other words. Heat has been REMOVED from your home. Coolness has not been ADDED.\n\nAdd to this all the heat generated at the powerplant giving juice to your A/C. As you can see, the process of cooling is more complex because entropy cannot be reversed. Somewhere in the enclosed system you have generated more heat to cool whatever you were trying to cool (inherent practical inefficiencies). Heating is a simpler, more fundamental process. Therefore, it takes more energy to cool (in practice) than to heat. In theory, you could just move heat from one place to another when you wanted a cool area in the universe. In reality, this is harder to do, therefore, you create more heat trying to do it."
]
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[],
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e2u559 | what does it mean that europe has run out of ip addresses? | _URL_0_
Why can't they just generate more numbers? Is there a fixed number of physical ports or something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e2u559/eli5_what_does_it_mean_that_europe_has_run_out_of/ | {
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"Every IPv4 address can only be used once. There are 4,294,967,296 addresses possible. All of these have already been used so now Europe needs to switch to IPv6 with 2\\^128 possible addresses.",
" > Is there a fixed number of physical ports or something?\n\nNot physical, logical.\n\nIPv4 uses 32 bit addresses. This means that only a total of 2^32 (approximately 4.2 billion) IP addresses can ever exist. Each ISP gets a subset of these addresses (known as as subnet), so it is limited to the addresses in that subnet.\n\nRIPE is the organization that hands out subnets to ISP in Europe.",
"IPv4 addresses can go from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. That's 2^(32) addresses. Certain addresses are reserved, private, or public. Public ones got allocated to the various Internet governing bodies across the planet which would then lease their use. The governing body for Europe is fresh out of IPv4 leases\n\nThankfully there's IPv6, the improved Internet Protocol. It has a far larger address space (2^(128), which is more addresses than atoms that make up the planet), as well as more security overall"
]
} | [] | [
"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/europe-is-fresh-out-of-ipv4-addresses/"
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[],
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8h757c | how do american supermarkets get away with offering so much in coupon discounts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8h757c/eli5_how_do_american_supermarkets_get_away_with/ | {
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"TLDR ELI5: Not an american but margins in supermarkets are HUGE and it is way cheaper to keep an existing loyal customer than to attract a new one.\n",
"I would say there is very few individuals of the population who participate in “extreme couponing” in America. So it ends up being negligible when it comes to putting grocery stores out of business.",
"I’m not an expert on this but I’d say it’s because not everyone “coupons”. It’s the say 10 out of the 100 that do coupon might hit them but they buy in bulk so it offsets the few that do. I’ve worked retail and am in inventory control at another Fortune 500 company. I know how much they pay to how much they sell it for. They buy cheap to sell high. Little things go for at least a 100-300 percent markup. Your higher value things they don’t make a lot off of. So, the few that coupon they can withstand that limited amount they aren’t getting off the ones who don’t. ",
"They know that a majority of their customers don’t take advantage of the coupons. Only around 1% of coupons are ever redeemed. I believe this allows the stores to give customers the sense of saving without actually giving them more product for less money. "
]
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90p4e8 | why do some music chords and intervals sound consonant while others sound dissonant | And why some chords that are supposed to sound dissonant sound consonant in a song? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90p4e8/eli5_why_do_some_music_chords_and_intervals_sound/ | {
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"Think of waves in the ocean; sound travels in a similar fashion. Sound waves have a frequency, which is how often the tops of the waves come by. Lower frequencies can be divided equally by some higher frequencies so that the waves line up every so often and this produces a pleasant sound. Other frequencies don't divide evenly so their waves don't line up, and this produces an unpleasant sound. \n\nSay you pick the low E string on a guitar. The next E occurs on the 12th fret (the eight notes of the octave plus the half-steps). The halfway point to this fret is the 7th, which is a B. This B vibrates 50% faster than the low E, so every 4th wave aligns. The A# or C from going down or up a fret isn't evenly divisible, so they won't line up. ",
"\"Dissonance\" is partly cultural, but there is a lot of math and physics in music. \n\nA vibration that is twice as fast as another vibration will be the same note, but higher. Take middle C's rate of vibration and double it (2:1), and you get the C above middle C.\n\nBut wait, there's more! Simple ratios of vibration (2:1, 3:2, 4:3, etc) sound nice, consonant, complementary.\n\nMiddle C times 3 divided by 2 gives us G above middle C. This is a \"perfect fifth\" and it sounds nice.\n\nMiddle C times 4 divided by 3 gives us F above middle C. This is a \"perfect fourth\" and it also sounds nice.\n\nTLDR: note combinations that sound dissonant don't have nice simple vibration ratios.\n\n"
]
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[],
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a1uop2 | how did hackers obtain the email-addresses of celebrities? | reference: 2014 celebrity hack
I learned that they got the passwords through phishing mails. But how did they get the email address in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1uop2/eli5_how_did_hackers_obtain_the_emailaddresses_of/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Email addresses aren't exactly secret. In many cases, you may find addresses, just by doing a bit of clever research on the internet.\n\nOften, email addresses also are associated with the victims public media accounts. Assuming the address isn't publically visible there in the first place, still, all it takes is a leak at one of the social media providers. This things have happened and continue to happen.\n\nYet another method for getting that info: Follow the victim, paparazzi style. If they use public WiFi in that fancy restaurant, the attacker can record the network traffic using a network sniffer. From that, they can extract plenty of data, if transport layer security wasn't used. Note: 2014 only a small minority of websites used encryption. Most stuff was sent in clear text. This has improved a bit since.\n\nEven more evil, the attacker could setup their own public WiFi. If the victim falls for that trick and connects to the public WiFi, the attacker has full controll over what the victim is going to see. This is called a \"man in the middle\" attack. The attacker could then redirect the victim to a fake login page, say, when she tries to login into her iCloud account. Voilà! The attacker now has her password. From there, the rest is childs play. The best defense against that sort of attack is to use VPN when using a public WiFi."
]
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[]
] | |
2mxere | why are homeopathic doctors allowed to call themselves doctors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mxere/eli5_why_are_homeopathic_doctors_allowed_to_call/ | {
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"Because, technically, they do have PhDs. PhDs from deeply dubious schools, with even more deeply dubious educational quality, but they can show you a diploma that says 'PhD' on it.\n\n",
"In the UK, they have to be medically qualified as well as being homoeopathically trained.\n\nWeird, yes, I know."
]
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2wcuxv | why are racist insults significantly more taboo than sexist insults, or insults to any other demographic for that matter? | Why does the N word > bitch, dick (misandry?), retard etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wcuxv/eli5why_are_racist_insults_significantly_more/ | {
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"Those insults are primarily used as generic insults not targeted at any demographic. I've never heard anyone call a mentally disabled person a \"retard\", and if they did it would be as offensive as the N word.",
"The n-word resonates more than other slurs because American children are generally taught about slavery and segregation in (kid-friendly) detail, at least one month a year.\n\nSlurs for Asians, Hispanics, etc. are still considered terrible, but there isn't the same *narrative* attached to the public consciousness, so they're not quite at the top.\n\nSlurs for gays and the disabled are getting more taboo as those perspectives are becoming more mainstream, but we don't give \"retard\" and \"fag\" the same weight as \"nigger\" yet, even though they are just as powerful and hurtful (as a forceful reminder of power imbalance and targeted humiliation based on a visceral identity).\n\nWords like \"bitch\" are more complicated, as they can be a slur in some instances, but not others. Women have a more successful history of reclaiming slurs, as well.\n\n\"Dick\" doesn't register as a slur because it's not symbolic of power being held over men on a massive scale. Not to say men can't be belittled, even for their sex (an asshole behavior that pops up in certain radical feminist circles), but men are typically not hyper-aware of their sex as a bad thing except for very rare occasions.\n\nThe \"worst\" slurs toward men are the ones that attack a man's masculinity, like \"pussy.\""
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1s7tyj | why do you start imaginary arguments while in the shower? | I'm not sure, i'm just wondering | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s7tyj/eli5_why_do_you_start_imaginary_arguments_while/ | {
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1eidqb | how do people get the oil out of a tree, plant, fruit, vegetable, or fish? | This question was sparked when I got myself some neem oil at an Indian herb store. I was wondering how the neem oil came through to this tiny little bottle.
How does this whole oil process work? ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1eidqb/eli5_how_do_people_get_the_oil_out_of_a_tree/ | {
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"I guess it would depend on the exact properties of each oily item.. But this is a high level run through of how they get olive oil.\n\n1. Crush the olives.\n\n2. Squeeze the crushed olive paste, removing oil by mechanical means only. \n\n3. Heat the paste, and squeeze again. \n\n4. Use solvents to extract the residual oils from the squeezed paste, then recover the oils from the solvent in a separate process.\n\n5. Filter/clean-up the oil you produce, bottle it, package it etc...\n\nI'd imagine it's a similar process for the other oily items on the list too.. Might be some good youtube \"How It's Made\" style videos (sorry I can't check at work!) showing you the process in more detail!"
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5peivh | how was it that in the united states, most people were able to afford mortgages, car payments, health insurance, food, etc. without a college education before? | Now it seems like it is a lot tougher to be 100% independent than it was back in the 1950s-1980s. Now even if you do have a college education, chances are that you need to rely on roommates/subsidies to be able to pay for yourself. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5peivh/eli5_how_was_it_that_in_the_united_states_most/ | {
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"In the 50s and 60s the world was decimated by WWII and we were the domanant manufacturing superpower. Blue collar work was valued and unions were strong. Women didn't work as much.\n\nFast forward to the present. Jobs require more sophistication. Manufacturing is done for cheap in a heavily comoditized fassion. The us has competition from all over the world. Single men compete against the power of two incomes. \n\nDon't be sad, the game is just different. You can still win. STEM fields, nursing, sales (if you're good), trades (if you're driven) will make bank. Play the game right, don't rack up a TON of debt and you can win. Not living in a super high COL city helps. Go a of good paying jobs in cheaper cities like ATL, tampa, Charlotte.",
"A lot of laws were passed in earlier years that are only now having that full effect. The middle class that did a lot of the work important to the country itself is shrinking because of such laws, as well as a stagnant minimum wage and rising costs of post-secondary education. There's a lot more to it, but that's what I know for sure.",
"In general, the price of big ticket items have increased faster than inflation. For example a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, for it's time a decent luxury car, was about $3000, in 2016, that's about $26000. Today $26k is closer to the price of a midrange car, and not a premium car.\n\nToday's cars have more features, bigger, more powerful and more safety features.\n\nSame for homes, a 1950 era home was about 950 square feet, today we'd call that a small townhouse or apartment. Larger homes, finer furnishings, etc. \n\nA skilled tradesman could easily afford a family in 2016 living the 1950s life. But most people would consider that to be humble\n\nSource\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
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45ktjm | why is singapore so successful when it's democracy index is 6.14 and oil industry is responsible just for 5 percent of the gdp? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45ktjm/eli5_why_is_singapore_so_successful_when_its/ | {
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"Trade. \nIf you want to get something from China to Europe you have to go past Singapore to the Suez Canal. \nWant to get Middle Eastern Oil back? Singapore. \nIt also has some of the best port infrastructure on the planet.\n \nFurthermore the founding father of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew did a bunch of good things. \n1) Come down hard on even the slightest hint of corruption. \n2) Encourage the people to keep using English, even after the British left. \n3) Maintain good relations with both the USA and China.",
"Geography and diplomacy, with a hint of the good kind of totalitarianism.\n\nEven before colonial times Singapore was a local trading hub and friend of China. They even sent ships to defend Singapore from the Majapahit Empire.\n\nWe were extremely lucky to have had a great team of people at the nation's birth who weren't corrupt and actually knew what they were doing. Our location alone would have brought us far no matter who was leading the country, but it was Lee that prevented Singapore from becoming just another run down South-east Asian country.\n\nFurthermore, we don't have the kind of political circus like Washington D.C. blocking progress. A lot can be done when politicians are not distracted with fighting elections. Lee's (and his team's) heavy-handedness and incorruptibility was a large part in making so much progress in such a short time, where other countries get stuck.",
"Here's a slightly biased Singaporean reply :\n\nCause, you know, we don't suckle off the petrodollar teat but instead build a strong trade-focused economy.\n\nSo this includes \n\n-our strong ports\n\n-regional air hub\n\n-regional financial hub\n\n-value-add to manufactured goods for resale\n\n-safe place with great regional accessibility and IP laws for MNCs\n\n-High work/product standards maintained through meritocracy (as opposed to say,China)\n\nAll this is linked to our favorable geography in sea routes between China and Europe, and or unique position as a recognized bastion of stability in ASEAN \n\nAs for democracy, the commonly used definition of democracy is a western construct\n\nDemocracy =/= how efficient or even how incorruptible a government is\n\nSure, the system is weighted in favor of the ruling party so decisions can be made for the long term without risking the pitfalls of populism, but there are checks and balances to safeguard against abuse of power \n\nThe political system in Singapore basically functions as a beneficial monarchy/autocracy/has a benevelont dictatorship. \n\nWhere the rulers have the freedom to make really drastic actions/impose on our human rights/make extremely unpopular decisions(conscription) but ultimately,wants whats best for the country and actively tries to do what benefits the most number of people. \n\nThis system is more effective than a democracy where the government is tied down by squabbling like the American congress is at the moment.\n\nHowever it risks all the power falling into incompetent or selfish individuals in the future, we've been lucky so far to have had generally competent and well meaning Prime Ministers starting from the founding father Lee Kuan Yew to his son Lee Hsien Loong now.\n\n\nFinally,Social cohesion (at least the appearance of it) is maintained through longstanding, deliberate policies.\nAlso,really strict laws and the idea that anyone at all can be charged and jailed for disturbing the peace. \nGenerally the laws aren't enforced for first time offenders or minor cases though,more slap on the wrist measures are taken like fines.\n\nThis is why (I feel) we've made it so far\nBut from here on our government really has to be far more consultative\n... At the same time retain its relative efficiency and decisiveness \nNot easy.",
"-Benevolent dictator\n-Total control over the press\n-Political and financial destruction of dissidents\n-Tough stance against corruption (absolute necessity)\n-Tough against crime. caning / hanging.\n-Pro business & foreign direct investment\n-Permanent one party rule via gerrymandering\n-Very politically stable as a result\n-Focus on education including policies similar to no child left behind as well as state standardised testing\n-Science+math technocratic principles in education\n-Focus on english as the working language resulted in the most educated english speaking working population in SE Asia, attracting even more MNCs to setup asia HQ there\n-Swiss style neutrality vis a vis international diplomacy (money money money)\n\nTLDR Everything to make the place good for business was put in place by a benevolent dictator and everything else contrary to this principle was/is banned with threat of heavy penalty.",
"Singaporean here! Personally, I feel it's a mixture of authoritarian capitalism and geography. Our location helps immensely as a trade-oriented nation which means that a lot of physical and financial trade comes through our state. The Singapore port is one of the busiest in the world and in fact, while oil and gas accounts for only about 5% of GDP, Singapore is one of the top 3 oil refining centres in the world. \nWhich brings us to the authoritarian capitalism aspect. The government, which has been in power since independence (1965), has been quite heavy-handed in its management of the country. Fortunately, they weren't idiots. They promoted the use of English (not everyone's is the best but conversationally it's acceptable), adopted Mandarin as the mother tongue for all Chinese, invested in infrastructure (manufacturing, ports, semicon, etc), kept a consistent budget surplus, enforced strict laws (some call it draconian), weeded out corruption (partially by paying Ministers a million-dollar salary), developed the financial sector (2nd highest FX trade volume in APAC behind Japan), adopted business-friendly regulations, keeps a low tax regime, strongly promoted higher education and implemented forced-savings (called CPF, similar to a 401k or superannuation). \n \nIt's BIG government, but it worked and admittedly is a unique solution for a very very small country. What worked in the past may not and probably won't completely work for Singapore's future and already there are some cracks beginning to show. But to answer your question as an ELI5: \n \nA kid called Singapore got kicked out of the cool club at school cos he was timid, scrawny and frankly useless. But he happened to live in a really nice neighborhood. So he started working out, set up some comfy lawn chairs in the front garden for fine bitchez to laze on, ran garage sales but only the cool shit that everyone wanted, let other people sell their stuff as well for a small fee, saved up all his money and also bought lemonades and sold lemon juice. Even though the lemon juice only makes up 5% of his piggy bank he's still selling more lemon juice than a lot of other kids in the city. Every now and then his timid side wonders if he should just chill out a bit and enjoy a simple life. But fuck that, timid-Singapore doesn't know shit - and now all the fine bitchez on the street are sitting on his lawn chairs. ",
"It's mostly due to them being the most economically-free country in the world. Their lax business rules and regulations make it easy for corporations to make money there. \n\nTheir democracy index doesn't really mean anything as far as economic success goes. Hell, the gulf states are some of the richest countries on Earth yet are all classified as authoritarian regimes. On the other hand, you got countries like Jamaica and Ghana that have higher democracy index scores but are still developing.",
"4 principles for a booming country:\n\n1. Control the media.\n2. Control the schools.\n3. Ensure populace have a stake in society. \n4. Be open for trade. ",
"The title though. A bit presumptuous no?\n\nWhy is Singapore successful despite its lack of natural resources, why is it successful despite its size.\n\nAll better than a question pushing political agenda. Besides, the American democracy hasn't exactly worked out well for them has it now?",
"To respond to the 2nd part, and trying to do an ELI5:\n\nTommy and John live on two separate plots of land, and both have some money. Tommy's land happens to have a ton of gold on it, so he's happy and uses his money to buy diggers and shovels to get the gold and sell it, thus earning him money. John's land is very poor, so instead he uses his money to buy books, studies hard, and gets into a good school.\n\nFast forward 20 years, and all of Tommy's gold has run out, and sadly he hasn't saved much of it. On the other hand, John got a good stable job for the rest of his life. \n\n\n\nThe point is, when you are a very resource poor country like Singapore, you have very little choice but to invest in your citizens, since they are the greatest resource you have. This holds true for a lot of Asian places, Japan, HK, South Korea, Macau, Singapore, etc. Having a strong oil indusry (or any natural resource to be honest) is never a good indicator of a successful economy, American/Auz+NZ are some nice exceptions. ",
"Thought I'd try to answer the question directly.\n\nYour economic success is a direct function of your ability to create value. Imagine if a super-villain created an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He has no oil, and no democracy– it's just a pure dictatorship. And he happens to also produce a serum that reverses aging, which he sells to the global marketplace for a profit.\n\nHe's bound to be very successful, regardless of his lack of oil and democracy.\n\nSingapore doesn't have anti-aging serum, but it has a whole bunch of things that are valuable to people: \n\n* It's safe, reliable and clean in many, many senses of the word. If you're a business leader in the APAC region, you'd probably want to make SG your home base.\n* It's easy to do business with. It's got a well-educated workforce. \n* It's a great jumping-off point if you need to travel to anywhere in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc) or even Japan, Australia, India, etc. \n* It's got great relationships with practically every other country in the world. It even has a North Korean embassy.\n\nIf you needed a short TLDR:\n\n**Singapore is successful despite of perceived shortcomings because it's *valuable*, period.** If we stopped being valuable, we'd stop being successful. And we're pretty paranoid about not dropping the ball on that, so our partners and clients continue to trust us and do business with us in every sense.\n\nUpdate: If you wanna be realpolitik about it, the things that make us unpopular also make us va",
"Politically, it's an autocracy.\n\nCivil society is very social democratic. Police crush low-level corruption, violent crime, and drugs but are fair and lenient with non-violent crime.\n\nEconomically it's very liberal. Free-trade keeps the $ flowing and people can move up in the world. Singapore's location in the world is very lucky for trade.\n\nSocially it's focused on diversity but they don't simply tolerate minorities. They put huge money into giving *everyone* a pretty swanky middle-class life.\n\nEdit: It's a pretty good example of how an autocratic state can work really well. Problem is Singapore has yet to have a real succession of power. Who knows if the next rulers will be so pragmatic. 'Hiccups' in succession can be devastating when so much power & $ is on the line.\n\n**TL;DR 80% of people live very good lives. 10% are ultra-rich. 10% get screwed. 90-10 is a pretty good ratio.**",
"In a democracy, change happens very, very slowly because you have bickering political parties fighting each other all the time.\n\nIn a dictatorship, as in Singapore, change can happen much more quickly. \n\nFast change can be very good (e.g. China's economic growth the past 20 years) or can be very very bad (e.g. China's Great Leap Forward that unintentionally killed 50m people).\n\nWith a democracy, you can't fuck up too bad, but on the other hand you can't fix things easily (e.g. poverty in India).",
"Pretty much every former British colony that didn't completely fuck themselves over (see The shithole that used to be the prosperous colony of Rhodesia) have done very well for themselves. \n\nThe British system was very efficient. Every man has a job. Every woman has a man. Every person is accountable and if they fail to maintain utility they will be flogged or discarded. \n\nOrder, prosperity, opportunity, delegation of labor. The ingredients for a successful civilization. ",
"Check out their tax rates. They actually let people keep money they make. It's a crazy concept but it seems to be working. ",
"Pretext: I'm someone who was born in Malaysia (\"democratic\" but corrupt), moved to Singapore at age 12 (authoritarian but successful), and finally moved to the USA at age 18 (highly democratic, powerful, successful).\n\nWhat I've seen:\n\nDemocracy is not correlated with how successful a nation is. It in fact hinders success, since you have a system where the approval of millions of people is somewhat necessary to getting things done. Imagine trying to get your idea approved by your bosses. The odds are tough, and the process takes a very long time. Now imagine that you have millions of bosses to go through. You can see how this slows things down.\n\nWhat ultimately matters to the success of a nation isn't the system of government. It is what the government does for the people, regardless of whether said government was elected or not. Singapore, for example, has an extremely high quality education system, a friendly business landscape, and officials who do genuinely care about the people. Any HINT of corruption is instantly stamped out without hesitation.\n\nMalaysia, while more democratic in comparison, has spent the last 50+ years or so squandering all of its resources through inept management and corrupt officials. Education is a joke, more like a propaganda tool to ensure the current party stays in power. There are elections, but they keep a good chunk of the population stupid and uneducated to control where the votes go. They even have oil money, but that money goes towards failures of projects because they do \"direct negotiations\" with government cronies, i.e., no competition for the best to come forth.\n\nNow, in the US, they are highly democratic, have a world-class education system (despite all the grumbling, US colleges are the best in the world), and a friendly business landscape. Note the two common threads between the US and Singapore: Education and business landscape. Democracy did not do anything for Malaysia.\n\nTherefore, it isn't how the government is formed, it's what the government does.",
"- heavy trade. It's a big trade port, similar to Shanghai or other regions with ocean access. The revenue brought in from trade gives a nice baseline of wealth from tourism, travel, goods and services.\n- Singapore Airlines, public transportation and Changi Airport. This seems like a small thing, but it truly is pleasant using their services, and it makes travel to Singapore much more desirable. It helps with their tourism big time. While I love America, our services are downright embarrassing compared to Singapore.\n- it's small. The most successful countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, all have tiny populations that can be manipulated, controlled, and forced to \"do the right thing.\" Also makes change and implementing programs easier.\n- a benevolent dictator. You can't really call Singapore a democracy. Lee Kuan Yew could have easily been a piece of shit and terrorized Singapore a la Hussein's Iraq, but thankfully he seemed to have high minded goals and did right by the city state. Plus people followed his charisma and influence, which is more palatable than military rule.\n- it's a capitalist paradise. There historically wasn't much to speak of when it comes to labor law. So no minimum wage, union protections, and people weren't paid overtime. There have been recent reforms to help give more worker rights, but historically (and arguably today) it was a ripe place for worker exploitation. This makes companies want to invest there, especially foreign companies who are sick of their own domestic policies forcing them to spend more to accommodate their work force. Singapore has historically welcomed foreign investment. By the way, I've heard that Singapore is a fun place to visit, and also to live if you're rich, but it can be quite grueling working there.\n- friendly tax region. The poor aren't taxed, while the rich pay up to twenty percent. It's much more straight forward and cheaper than the US system of tax havens, shelters, keeping earnings overseas, etc. Companies and rich people love the cheap taxes.\n- it's a misnomer that democracies are the only successful form of government. The definitions and standards can be hotly debated, but there were certainly periods where the USSR and China saw heavy GDP growth and were considered \"successful,\" while democracies can be seen as unsuccessful during certain periods. Consider both stock market crashes in the US, or the Civil Rights period. Don't forget there was a propaganda-friendly thought process in Russia, Germany, and China that the American blacks would overthrow the White privileged class due to ill treatment. It's only with 20/20 hindsight that we can say the race riots were/are contained.\n- strict immigration policies. You can work there, but good luck becoming a citizen. You better have some money, educated, and know the right wheels to grease. AKA Jet Li. Having tight controls helps keep criminals and riff raff out (see Sweden, Finland, Switzerland). You can point to exceptions such as prostitution, pimping, and loan sharking. But Singapore has been known to crack down hard whenever these elements act up by producing a murder.\n- very tough laws. There is heavy handed treatment towards criminality, especially drugs. So don't litter or break any laws, like not even a little. You can get screwed real easily if you don't behave yourself.\n\nTL;DR: Don't put too much weight on democracy index; trade; strict policies and lax labor and tax laws led to success. \n",
"Free market capitalism. Consistently ranks as one of the freest economies. As does Hong Kong. This of course says nothing about human rights and doesn't imply that it's anything more than an *economically* successful place. ",
"Democracy isn't an economic principle; why would you tie it to economic success? Does it surprise you that China is well off? Technically speaking, slavery is a very profitable business, but horribly undemocratic. In many ways democracy hurts business.",
"It has very low taxes and excellently low administrative load of forming and running a business.",
"It is one of the most important and strategically located cities in the world for trade. Its government and oil industry are irrelevant, I'm not sure why you even mention those things, as if those things are required for a country to be successful.",
"Lol why do you assume that you need a good oil industry to be a profitable country?",
"I've thought about this, lived in Singapore but from a nearby country. In perspective, when Singapore left Malaysia in 1965, it was written off by most people as a country that could not survive and will eventually be forced to rejoin Malaysia. It was a poor fishing village, the bulk of its population were unskilled and untrained. There was no major industries or deep sea port so to speak that were developed yet. As investors back in the 70s would think, Singapore is still pretty backwater and doesn't hold much of a promise. When it gained independence, RM0.60 was SGD1.00. Today it is RM3.10 to SGD1.00. \n\nWhile there is a fancy story of how Singapore grew because of fantastic education, good infrastructure and strong governance, I think what most people fail to see is that these things didn't just happen overnight and costs money. A lot of money. \n\nSo where did the money to develop and improve Singapore come from? Remember that this is a country which emerged from independence without natural resources, unskilled workforce and no major infrastructure. \n\nSo the government went out there to court investors to set up factories and gave a lot of concessions including tax free benefits. As a small country with no local industries to protect, this was as easy thing to provide. \n\nBut I would like to suggest something a bit more insidious as Singapore's growth model has been copied to far lesser degrees of success. One of the reasons why investors were willing to put money in Singapore is because of its laws, it is a tax haven, ask-no-questions offshore financial model and early Cayman Islands. The amount of financial assets in the country is staggering and largely because it is perceived to be Asia's Switzerland. It is also no coincidence that in a corrupt region like south east Asia, most of the known despots like Marcos, Suharto and the Myanmar military junta have assets in Singapore. During the Asian Financial Crisis and the fall of Suharto, a lot of rich Indonesians fled to Singapore along with their families, a telling sign of where their money is at. \n\nSo yes, they had the right policies, respected rule of law, and relatively good governance. But all those things don't necessarily spell success without money, and Singapore had lots of it from their corrupt neighbors who are more than willing to invest in Singapore to protect their ill gotten gains. I'm not saying that this is the only reason, but somehow the Singapore version of their growth doesn't seem to resonate with me in contrast with other countries. Especially their financial centre. Maybe that's why they have the unspoken reputation of being the money laundering centre of south east Asia. But I think it has a bigger part to play in the country's success than the officials would like to admit. ",
"Governments of the past made a push to diversify Singapore's economy (e.g professional services, investments, manufacturing, trade). As a result of those pushes, Singapore has one of the worlds most diverse economies, which allows it to constantly expand into different markets. Previous governments also invested heavily in physical capital / infrastructure, which really allowed quality manufacturing to triumph over cheap foreign labor. \n\nSimply having the government push for a balanced economy + channel lots of physical capital might not sound that great, but the alternative of \"letting the market decide\" can be really problematic. IF a single industry becomes too profitable, many members of the \"free market\" will switch over to that industry. Why would you become a Lawyer if you could make 10x as much money selling Coal or Iron? In the short-term this is okay, but long term, any nation that puts too much emphasis on a single industry is at great economic risk if that single industry declines (we can see this happening to an extent in countries like Canada or Australia, which were a bit overzealous with mining commodities). \n\nSo to come back to the original point, Oil (single resource, commonly leads to dutch disease) + highly open democracy (lack of strong economic direction) can sometimes be detrimental to long-term economic growth. The two things you have flagged as being important to growth often have the opposite effect on GDP. In Singapore's case, avoiding both has lead to much of the nations economic success. ",
"The other users have pointed out the reasons for Singapore's success, but the biggest factor is the ability to micromanage the country.\n\nThe city-state is essentially an island by itself, which means it's easy to micromanage everything physical. Criminals want to escape? Not so easy since there's no where else to go. Want to implement nationwide change? Sure, everything is concentrated on this small landmass.\n\nImagine playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization®, where every choice has its consequences in the long run. \n\nImagine having a group of people play on one account, with the player changing every 20 turns. \n > \n > \"I want a cultural victory! Let's focus on Piety and build temples.\" \n > \n > [20 turns later, another user takes over] \"Nope, we're going for Freedom and focus on building Wonders instead.\" \n > \n > [20 turns later] \"Nope, no Cristo Redentor. It's better to build an Opera House for a cultural victory.\"\n\nThat is basically what's happening in many big democratic countries - the general direction is the same, but you'll see a lot of squabbles over policies via the senate or when there is a change in ruling parties (USA, Australia, Canada, UK).\n\nNow, imagine if it's a single player making all the decisions. That was what happened when Singapore gained independence - all the opposition parties withdrew, leaving one party in charge of the Parliament.\n\nAlso, Singapore has a comparatively small governance system with only a Parliament (no Upper House or Senate). This makes decision-making streamlined, and the Prime Minister can administer change easily.\n\nObviously the draw back is if the player is a noob or corrupt, the country probably struggle.\n\nBut Singapore have been lucky in the sense that their leaders have been brilliant players who clamped down on corruption. And they have set up a system where only the top players can succeed them. In a way, Singapore is a technocracy - most of the Ministers are scholars of some sort.\n\nIn this aspect, Singapore's brand of autocratic democracy has done them well; having one capable player clicking all the buttons along the same strategy.\n\nThe drawback has been their perceived lack of democracy, but the key is that the citizens have the ability to overthrow the ruling party if they fail them (which came close to happening in 2006). \n\nThe perceived lack of free speech is also somewhat misrepresented. A lot of it has to do with slander - the people in charge there clamp down on people who make unsubstantiated claims about them. If someone says that you are a paedophile just because you take your dog to walk in the park every day, would you not defend yourself?\n\nOn the same token, these lawsuits prevents all the yellow journalism perpetrated by tabloids and shitty news outlets like Daily Mail/ The Sun in the UK, Fox in the USA.\n\n\n",
"\"democracy\" is not necessary in economic prosperity, good management is. Otherwise, corporation would adopt \"democracy\" as its governing style or India would be cutting edge of prosperity.\n\nSingapore is fairly small. Only 2 million people, packed in very small place. It's easy to keep it tidy.\n\nThink of Singapore more like a well run office combined with large institution.\n\nOn the other hand, Punk rock, dark humor and noir movie would never exist in Singaporean universe. ",
"Also tax. Singapore is making money as the headquarters of Asia pacific companies collecting less tax than if that tax was paid in the countries it was earned. Just like the Bahamas for the US or Ireland for Europe. This is done through transfer pricing. With online economies, multinational taxation is going to be the big issue of this century. ",
"Democracy is just a correlation, not necessarily the actual cause of success. Metrics should always be looked at in context. \n\nIt is how like conventional economics tell you to pursue higher GDP growth for better standard of living, but in recent years Singapore's government have dropped GDP growth targets and are deploying more resources and policies on social satisfaction than economic satisfaction. This was because we had lots of social unrest and dissatisfaction when we were pursuing our GDP targets ",
"singapore had a very enlightened ruler. it was billed as a democracy but is really a dictatorship by lee kuan kew and his crew. he had the power to make any changes and he made very good ones. he made many reforms to control the populace and turned it from a backwards and divided culture into a first world and united one. for example, he imposed strict punishment on country bumpkin habits like peeing on street and littering. housing apartments can not have only one group of people on the same floor. it had to be a mix of indian, malaysian and chinese people. so no ghettos develop and people are forced to live together and there wont be any us vs them mentality amongst them. \n\nhe made the \"interface\" of the country into a western one where everyone can speak english do business in a western manner. this means that if you are a western business, you don't have to deal in a foreign method. you can just stop by singapore and do business with them, you'll make a little less because of a middle man but it is much easier for you to do business. this is the same case with hong kong and that's why hk is also very wealthy. too bad hk didnt have a draconian ruler like lee and so it is a dirty and debauched city. so basically, if you are selling or buying shit in asia, you could bring it all the way to the other side of the world then drop it off at a place very familiar to your way of thinking. why wouldn't you?\n\nanother one is he had strict banking rules set in place and so even while the entire world fell to the credit crisis, singapore didn't bear the blunt of it. \n\nthere are many others which i don't remember and are too lazy to list anyway.",
"Because dictatorship. Benevolent dictators can make a country very rich and prosperous. Bad one do the opposite.",
"There was once a very, very smart man named Lee Kuan Yew who fought for Singapore's independence. He \"liberated\" this \"country\" then became the president for like twice as long as ive been alive. When he stepped down, he still kinda stayed in a position of control. So yeah, he had more than enough time to set up and then execute his game plan. He set up a very efficient meritocracy and didn't take no shit from no one. The govt was kept on a tight leash basically, which curbed if not eliminated corruption, unlike the criminal fucks we have here in america. His first concern was always economic stability and growth, even if it meant supressing some of what we would consider basic civil liberties in the west. \n\nSo yeah, he knew his shit. \n\n\nYou can throw education in there too. Those kids do nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe school. ",
"Who says you need democracy to be a successful country?",
"Who told you democracy is the way to success?",
"colonialism and occupation notwithstanding, singapore, taiwain, hong kong, macau, and fairly soon shanghai and shenzhen are all examples of how Chinese culture can/will look when it attains western notions of \"success\" with eastern traditions and policies. that's to say, western (direct/representative) democracy is not the only kind of democracy in the world. ",
"Also, expats.\n\nI did a search of this thread for the word expat. Not once was it mentioned. \n\nSingapore makes itself very conducive for foreigners to come in and do business. So people do. They come from China, India, UK, USA, Australia. Singapore has a lot of different kind of people all roaming around with a lot of money, usually in the process of trying to make more money. The mechanism is fueled by a lot of money being brought in. So they get to have nice things in the meantime. And probably will continue to for the foreseeable future. \n\nThey make it really attractive to conduct business there.",
"The citizens believe and practice ,that the world owes them nothing,and the harder they work the luckier they get.",
"Much to admire about Singapore though very few nations have as low a level of corruption. The US certainly doesn't.\n\nHowever its not all good for Singapore, a banner year for fertility is 1.25 per couple. This is far far below replacement and in the long term means real economic troubles for the nation ",
"Democracy has some connection to material prosperity, but it's a noisy indicator. Oil on the other hand has little to no bearing. Many poor countries have tons of oil, and many rich countries have no oil at all. \n\nSingapore is successful because it sits on one of the busiest sea lanes in the world. It's an international trade hub. Also, it has been fairly successful in managing its institutions so as not to muck things up. Many societies, despite ideal economic conditions, can fail to become wealthy because of ill-behaved institutions (corrupt and/or ineffective governments being a leading cause here). ",
"Most of the answers have focused on Singapore itself, but an important thing to remember is how well Singapore has positioned itself internationally.\n\nIn terms of the economy, Singapore embraced foreign direct investment early on and made sure that the infrastructure and quality of life would support and attract these businesses, at a time (mid 20th-century) when others often were more wary about opening up their economy to foreigners.\n\nBeyond that, though, Singapore has had an extremely effective foreign affairs policy and personnel. The first foreign minister, Rajaratnam, made it a point to travel as many countries as possible to gain support for the newly-independent country, and this ability to make friends has continued throughout the decades. This shows itself in how Singapore is effectively on friendly terms with almost every other country, most obviously shown in how Singapore manages to maintain close ties with both US and China despite their rivalry, or acts as the default venue for China-Taiwan attempts at diplomacy.",
"Singapore is what happens when you have very intelligent, very good, and very powerful people in charge of your country, even though it's not democratic. There have been many good kings and emperors throughout history. The problem is that their successors are rarely as good. It inevitably produces a bad leader at some point, if the country doesn't reform. edit: And democracies produce bad leaders too, but they're held accountable by elections and term-limits."
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27br5v | why does the sentence "i'm taking a trip home" make sense, while "i'm taking a trip work" doesn't? | Another example:
"My commute home is terrible" vs "My commute *to* work is terrible."
What makes home a special word that seems to include a verb with it?
Direction names are the same way. "I'm headed South." | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27br5v/eli5_why_does_the_sentence_im_taking_a_trip_home/ | {
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"Because \"home\" is a noun and describes a specific place, therefore it doesn't require a definite article such as \"the\", nor \"to\", which is an infinitive marker. \"Work\" is a verb and when used in the infinitive requires the word \"to\" in front of it. \n\nThe correct full verb is \"to work\". \"Work\" on it's own is the imperative form, i.e., a command or order which doesn't make sense without the correct grammar such as \"I'm taking a trip work\".\n\n\"I'm going home\" = I am going to a specific place, called Home.\n\n\"I'm going to work\" = I am going somewhere to carry out a task; to work.\n\nThe sentence \"I'm going to work\" does not describe a place. It only describes what you are going to do - not where you are going to do it.\n\nIf you work from home, you would say, \"I'm going home to work\". That describes what you are going to do and specifically where you are going to do it.\n\nLikewise, you wouldn't say \"I'm going to office\". That doesn't make sense because \"office\" used in that way is not a place. \"Office\" on it's own is a *thing*, not a place. It requires the definite article \"the\" in order to specify that you are going to *an* office.\n\n"
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2e45q2 | why are teams so superior at home? (soccer specifically, but it's true for many other sports) | What is it about playing at home that gives teams such an advantage?
Is it the fans chanting for you?
College Football is one sport where I understand. The crowd makes a lot of noise when the opponent is on offense to try to throw the communication off. So it make sense for the home crowd to equal about 6 points.
But in Soccer the crowd doesn't affect gameplay directly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e45q2/eli5_why_are_teams_so_superior_at_home_soccer/ | {
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"Travel can really take a toll on you. There is something to be said for keeping to your normal routine, not suffering from jet lag, not having cramped legs from all that travel, sleeping in your own bed, and not having to eat food you wouldn't normally eat at home.\n\nField differences can impact you, too. Yesterday, as an example, my son's soccer team struggled because the team they played left their grass grow a little longer. It made the ball behave much differently than it does on their home field which uses artificial turf.\n\nAnd never underestimate the home crowd cheering. Like you said, in American Football, it can make a huge difference.",
"Best story I have heard regarding this was a football team that told all the ballboys in their home stadium to wipe the balls dry for the home team, but leave them wet and slippery for the visiting team. ",
"Three reasons:\n\n1. Referees give home teams more favorable calls (this has been documented), and in sports like soccer and basketball, even a few extra calls going in your favor can easily change the course of the game.\n\n2. Travel can be a huge drain on a team, and a team that has been at home for several days has an edge over one that has been flying around the country or taking long bus rides. This is the biggest issue in basketball, where they play more frequently than football and where travel is more painful on their larger bodies.\n\n3. Having huge numbers of fans cheer you on does make a psychological difference that makes you play a little bit better. It isn't the only factor involved, but does matter, especially in pro and college football.\n\nInterestingly, MLS has the biggest home field advantage, then in descending order, it's the NBA, NFL, NHL, and baseball has the smallest.\n\n6 points in college football sounds like too much. In the NFL, home field advantage is considered to be worth 2.5 points."
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1jqksg | the benefits of compulsory voting | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jqksg/eli5_the_benefits_of_compulsory_voting/ | {
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"--All groups and viewpoints are represented in their full and proper proportion.\n\n--No problem of poverty or race reducing voter turnout.\n\n--Helps to prevent election and voting fraud -- election officials have to keep close track of who votes."
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5wv9n1 | if one destroy enough money, can one theoretically inflate the worth of each dollar bill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wv9n1/eli5_if_one_destroy_enough_money_can_one/ | {
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"Not materially, no. The actual % of the total 'money' that exists and notes and coins is quite small. At a guess, 5-6%. So even destroying it all, there is still 95% of the value of 'money' that hasn't been removed from the market.\n\nI guess if you destroyed enough of them, and the central bank didn't print any more - they'd be collectors items and have more value. ",
"Yes you can! Of course in the most part our assets are in fiat money(money on someones bank account) or in buildings and businesses. But if you destroy enough real bank notes the demand for those banknotes will go up in those areas where you need to exchange cash. Also there is the promise tjat you can exchange your assets against liquid cash. \n\nSo in short you increase the demand for money and the we inflate the value of each dollâr bill. We call this process **deflation** at no one should want this process to start!\n\nJust think about it. Your money will be worth more tomorrow. There is no reason for you to spend it today. The economy will crash, mass unemployement and negative net infrastructure investment are just some of the results.",
"Realistically no, however, if you became a multi-trillionaire, had a bank account in every bank in the US, then simultaneously withdrew all your money from each bank, it would cause a temporary depression.",
"I think I see what you're asking. If Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the Koch Brothers all (gradually for the sake of the argument) liquidated their assets and kept their money out of circulation forever (effectively destroying it), that could affect a 0.26% increase in the value of your money (Given that they have 200 billion and there is 75 trillion in the world). However, this assumes that they spend all of their money on the same things as you do (their demand is scaled and factored into the market) and there is 1 world currency. \n\nIn realistic conditions, you would have to have a very large amount of money to cause significant deflation and the side effects would put the world in a little bout of chaos.",
"I'm sorry if this sounds stupid but its something I have always wondered. They say you can't just print bills because that would just increase total amount of money so the total amount of money would be worth less. Why can't they just print out say print out 100,000,000 for each person and say it's worth face value. Kind of like iirc the Mexican government did with the peso durring the 50s/70s ? All bills printed before 1950 are worth 50 cents or whatever, and all bills printed after 1970 are worth face value. All it took was for them to say it's worth this much and it was. So why can't the same happen again and give everyone some",
"Well, the paper isn't actually worth anything other than as a collector's item. It's a bank note saying it's worth X-amount of gold or silver but it's actually valueless. Even if you had a genie and wished for all paper money to disappear, technically the money would still be there. (Or it would if we weren't under a huge debt.)\n\nWhat might go up in value is the rarity of the bills. Think about some pristine ancient Roman coin that is the only like it still in existence. It's worth a certain amount based on the materials it's made from, but it's real value comes from it's age and rarity. So if you had the last $20 bill of all time it would be worth more than $20 from a collector's point of view at least."
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41x0ki | a jet engine takes air in from the front and shoots air out the back. how is that fundamentally different from a propeller? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41x0ki/eli5_a_jet_engine_takes_air_in_from_the_front_and/ | {
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"The *turbine* portion of a jet engine is exactly like a row of propellers inside a tube.\n\nHowever, a jet engine also has a *combustion* portion, in which a large quantity of fuel is burned and the expanding exhaust gases are directed out the back (rather like a rocket), propelling the plane forward. This portion is nothing like a propeller.\n\nSo a modern jet engine is really two engines in one: the jet part and the turbine part.",
"In the middle, jet fuel is mixed with the air, ignited, and then forced out a nozzle in the back. As the fuel air mixture burns, it expands, and is forced out the back at much higher speeds and pressures that a regular propeller.",
"A jet engine creates thrust by taking cool air in, mixing it with fuel, burning it, this increases the temperature and pressure of the mixture, and then expel it out the exhaust nozzle. The exhaust leaves the jet with high velocity, resultant thrust is based on the momentum of the exhaust (total mass flow rate * exit velocity).\n\n & nbsp;\n\nA propeller generates thrust in a different way. The blades of a propeller are basically wings (it has an aerofoil profile), and as it spins, it generates lift forces, similar to lift forces generated on an aircraft's wings. The only difference is that while an aircraft's wings are fixed horizontally and produce lift upwards, the blades are rotated and orientated to produce lift forces in the thrust direction.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTLDR; Jet produces thrust by burning fuel and expelling the hot exhaust gases at high velocity, a propeller produces lift forces in the thrust direction as the blades spin."
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3565ca | why does sex feel so good? | What is it that causes sex to make a person feel so good? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3565ca/eli5why_does_sex_feel_so_good/ | {
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"Because our brain rewards us for reproducing by releasing a chemical called Dopamine which makes us feel good.\nSame goes for food.\nIts our own built-in reward system.",
"Natural selection.\n\nIf you had one individual who thinks sex feels good, and one who finds sex unpleasant, who is likely to try to have sex more? Obviously the one who thinks it feels good.\n\nThe person who has sex can have babies, while the one who doesn't won't have babies. So the sex-enjoying genes are more likely to be passed down, while the sex-hating genes are less likely to be passed on.\n\nAs a result, you end up with people, in general, enjoying sex.",
"Reproducing is vital for the survival of the species, hence, it makes evolutionary sense for it to be something desirable to do. "
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64yt6q | why is height the only biometric used to determine if you can ride a ride. | Carnivals and theme parks will often say "you have to be this tall to ride". Why is height the only important factor when riding a ride safely? Wouldn't many other metrics also be important?
*EDIT* So it appears that the other biometrics are considered when allowing someone to ride. The height metric is more visible due to lack of offense. Others have pointed out that too tall, too heavy, too wide of a waist, and more are all factors that can prevent a rider from riding. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64yt6q/eli5_why_is_height_the_only_biometric_used_to/ | {
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"It's not the only important factor, and some amount of additional discernment may be called upon by the operator. That being said, height is useful in two basic estimations, 1) if the safety equipment is likely to fit you, 2) your age, and hence expected maturity when dealing with the ride.",
"It's a very simple metric to check. All they need is a sign people walk next to and you can determine who will be able to ride a ride.\n\nIn contrast, almost any other measurement would need to be invasive or handled on an individual basis.",
"Height varies a lot and very short people - children, usually - won't be properly held in by the ride's restraints.\n\nVery tall people and very fat people also might not be able to ride, but they will be a lot less common. But theme parks are full of children who might not be tall enough for some of the rides.",
"I worked at an amusement park, and got some insight. You experience a variety of not often experienced forces during your day at the amusement park. Height is good measurement to determine how well you fit into the safety specifications of a ride. It is also quite consistent, and quick measurement that can be applied to all rides.",
"There are many others. Many rides have a long list of conditions that prevent one from being allowed to ride. Things like pregnancy or recent surgery, weight restrictions. \n\nHeight is just the most commonly known one. ",
"I've been at a water park where they weighed a party of people before letting them board the boat for a water slide type ride. "
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d1pxh7 | how is fmri done when physical tasks are required? | For example, a book I’m reading talked about a neuro-psych study done where brains were mapped while the subjects completed repetitive/boring tasks, allowing their mind to wander.
Another study I read about mapped brains in people with certain types of pain immediately after exercising.
How are images captured when physical tasks are involved and how accurate are images when there’s a lag (even if short) between task and imaging? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d1pxh7/eli5_how_is_fmri_done_when_physical_tasks_are/ | {
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"For the images to be sharp you only need for the head to be still, or more specifically the brain. The rest of the body can still be moving around and the patient can even move his eyes and mouth without impacting the image quality. If it is hard for the patient to keep their head still it is possible to mount it in the fixture that keeps the skull from moving. The subject can be put in such a place that only their head is inside the MRI machine leaving their body free to do other tasks. For example it is possible to install a weightlifting rack right outside the MRI machine to take fMRI while the subject is weightlifting. However care must be taken that no ferromagnetic substances is used."
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35p91d | why are a lot of products becoming subscriptions? | For example, MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite/Cloud come to mind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35p91d/eli5_why_are_a_lot_of_products_becoming/ | {
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"Software as a service is what it's called. Basically it's a way to cut down on piracy and to make more money off of you. ",
"Why sell you something once when they can sell you the same thing over and over? And it makes it much easier to cut you off when you don't jump through their hoops.",
"because the company earns more money.\n\ninstead of buying a package once and using it for years you have to pay monthly. adobe cc is about 850 chf / year, which is more than an creative suite update package was (which you could buy or not). so technically adobe forces you to buy a full update package every year. ",
"Adobe and Microsoft, for example, have the problem of their products being *too good*. When you look at something like Microsoft Office, there isn't a lot you can improve upon. Customers stick with older versions instead of upgrading because the older versions are \"good enough\". If you want to make money on a line of software, you either have to continually create new versions with \"must have\" features, or charge an ongoing fee.",
"There is also a less maniacal reason for this from a business perspective. It becomes a predictable revenue stream. Imagine you have to pay 100 employees for a year in order to create a product. You then get a huge pile of money the first couple of months of that new product that you have to put somewhere because you still have the 100 employees that you have to pay every two weeks. And of course you had to pay those employees while developing it. They certainly don't want to wait until the product ships. The start and stops of revenue can make doing business really hard from a labor perspective. If you know every month you get X dollars from your subscriptions, you have a better idea of what you can afford as far as employees and bills. Just a thought."
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d3fiwj | am i the only one that sees the 'all but' idiom backwards? i don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3fiwj/eli5_am_i_the_only_one_that_sees_the_all_but/ | {
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"Being \"all but convinced\" would imply you are nearly convinced, so in that respect, it kind of makes sense. In the same way \"Im 99% sure\" does. If thats confusing, try figuring out the \"Its not like...\" idium.",
"It's really meant as more of a 99% of the way the... i think of it like running a race and you have run it all but you haven't crossed the finish line"
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1qu45x | with so much advancement in technology that fits in our pockets, what makes consoles like the ps2/3/4 and xbox/360/one have to be that large? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qu45x/eli5_with_so_much_advancement_in_technology_that/ | {
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"Well, for starters there's significantly more power (especially in the graphics processing department) in consoles. They also have to physically fit media inside as well as a hard drive for downloaded games. Then there's ports for controllers, power, video, etc. that need space."
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k98rt | how a language like japanese reads and is written | I'll see an intricate little symbol drawn on a vase. I assume it translates to a word. Then I'll see pages and pages of similar looking (to me, at least) symbols sprawled out like our words in a sentence. Does every word have a unique symbol? Are there variants of the symbols that mean different permutations of a word? I just have no clue what I'm even looking at with that stuff | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k98rt/eli5_how_a_language_like_japanese_reads_and_is/ | {
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"Depends on the language, Chinese primarily uses characters to represent ideas, concepts, nouns, etc. which can be formed into sentences. Japanese uses three different writing systems Hirigana for spelling out their words and particles (mostly simple looking ones あいうえお), katakana for foreign words (square looking ones アイウエオ ), and kanji which are the complex looking ones and typically have a meaning and are combined with the other two to make sentences. \n\nThe Kanji (車私元気 a few simple ones) represent a word or a idea and can be combined with other for other meanings 今 means now, 日 means day, and 今日 means today.",
" > Does every word have a unique symbol?\n\nGenerally, yes. There are instances where one symbol can mean multiple different things, like \"draw\" a picture vs. \"draw\" a card in English. But generally, each symbol stands for one concept.\n\n > Are there variants of the symbols that mean different permutations of a word?\n\nNot very often. Usually, you add additional symbols to the first one to add to its meaning. Kinda like hyphenation in English. e.g. \"boat\" vs \"sail-boat\".\n\n > I just have no clue what I'm even looking at with that stuff.\n\nYou picked just about the worst possible language to try and learn in three minutes. ;]\n\nJapanese has two native alphabets, kinda like normal and cursive in English. And then, because that wasn't enough, they went and borrowed like 10,000 symbols from Chinese and incorporated those into their language as well. (Though only about 2-3,000 of the 10,000 are \"in common use\".)\n\nThe two native alphabets are called Katakana and Hiragana. Usually called \"kata\" and \"hira\" for short. [See reference card here.](_URL_1_) It's difficult at first to distinguish these from each other - and from the Chinese type of characters. Kata usually has sharp corners and no curves, and is often used for writing words derived from foreign languages. Hira has curves and circular shapes, and is generally used for native words. Most of the \"letters\" in Hira and Kata are relatively simple - they can be drawn with at most three strokes of the hand. They are considered elementary school material, mostly for children and other people just learning the language. Their relative simplicity is what allows you to distinguish them from the Chinese-derived symbols, the kanji.\n\n[Kanji - these are the dense, thick, seventeen-strokes-to-write kind of characters.](_URL_3_) Kanji is probably what you think of when you think of when you think \"Japanese writing.\" But in fact, Kanji characters were borrowed from Chinese. Chinese calls these same kind of characters \"hanzi\". Which, if you'll notice, doesn't sound too different from \"kanji\". Some kanji have mutated since they were borrowed from Chinese, but in general kanji are very similar to the original hanzi characters they came from.\n\nKanji are generally built up from smaller symbols. These smaller symbols are called \"radicals\". [See incomplete list here.](_URL_2_)\n\nSome radicals can be complete kanji characters all by themselves. For instance, the small square that represents the word \"mouth\" can be used by itself to just indicate \"mouth\". Also, the radicals for the numbers 1 to 10 can also act as complete words. (Representing the numbers 1 through 10, natch.) But in general, you usually need to put several radicals together to form a full symbol. For example, if you take the radical for \"roof\" and place it above the radical for \"woman\", you make the word \"safe\" (\"an\"). \"woman under roof\" = \"safe/secure\", get it? How about one more example. Combine the radicals for \"grain\" (\"nogi\") and \"mouth\" (\"kisa\"), \"grain in mouth\" = \"peaceful/harmonious\" (\"wa\").\n\nBut don't let these simple examples mislead you. The meanings of kanji are not always easily extracted based on the radicals. You will find all sorts of wildly crazy combinations that don't make any sense. For example, the word for \"outside/foreign\" is \"gai\", which is composed of the radicals for \"evening\" and \"prophecy\". Just try and figure that one out! In general, to a beginner, trying to figure out a kanji character by the radicals ends up feeling like reading nonsense words jumbled together - [\"Monkey Apple Carburetor\"](_URL_4_) syndrome.\n\nFinally, as if all that doesn't make your head spin badly enough: Most kanji symbols have *two* pronunciations. One is the Japanese pronunciation (\"kun-yomi\") and one is the Chinese (\"on-yomi\"). You have to figure out which is correct by context and experience. One web page explained this two-sounds-for-same-concept as being like the latin roots of English characters. We know the word \"far\" as meaning \"a long distance away\", but we also instinctively understand that the latin prefix \"tele-\" can mean the same thing. For instance, \"tele-phone\" = \"long distance sounds\" and \"tele-vision\" = \"long distance seeing\".\n\nSometimes you'll get lucky, and whoever wrote the kanji will also write the correct pronunciation of a kanji in small kana or hira symbols, next to or underneath the kanji character. This is called \"furigana\". Most commonly found in comics or other literature aimed at younger people. But generally, you're on your own. Inability to figure out the correct pronunciation of a kanji isn't just a problem for foreigners. Obscure, old kanji (such as those used in family names) are sometimes mispronounced so much that they become new words, or take on the common but mistaken pronunciation.\n\n\nSo anyway, once you have your 10,000 or so commonly known kanji all built up from radicals, you can combine them together and make something like an English word. Actually, this is less like putting letters together, and more like putting concepts together. Like the \"sail-boat\" compound word example I gave earlier.\n\nFor instance, take the kanji for \"electricity\" (\"den\") and the word for \"car/cart\" (pronounced \"kuruma\" or \"sha\" depending on context) and combine them: \"densha\" (\"train\"). Here again we see that the combinations don't always add up to what you expect them to. Some people speculate that Japan's first contact with anything train-like was electric streetcars, hence the origin of the word for train aka \"electric cart.\"\n\nHm, that was probably a longer explanation than a 5 year old could digest. Oh well. Language is a very complicated thing. (\"Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?\") If it's any consolation, [the inability to comprehend foreign languages cuts both ways.](_URL_0_) ;]\n\ntl;dr - Japanese is hard, monkey apple carburetor, I like you come home and fuck my sister!\n\n**Edits:** For clarity in the on/kun-yomi stuff.",
"Japanese borrowed a huge chunk of its writing system - the symbols you're referring to, called kanji - from Chinese. This is why you'll see a lot of the same symbols in both languages, though they don't always have the same meaning and defintely not the same pronunciation.\n\nlivinglifeback gave some good examples. To expand on that, two of the writing systems, hiragana and katakana, have set alphabets. There are about 45 characters in each, and they are syllabic - meaning that instead of a letter, like in english (a b c d e, etc) they represent syllables - ra, re, ro, ru, ri... etc. Hiragana and katakana have *exactly* the same syllables, but only look different. For example, the ones livinglifeback used - あいうえお and アイウエオ are *both* a i u e o. These two alphabets are probably no harder to learn than the English alphabet, and you can fall back on them in Japanese writing when you don't know the kanji to use. \n\nKanji is a pictorial written language. That is, each symbol you see is a representative drawing of something. For example, the kanji for eye 目 is supposed to look like an eye turned on its side. In the verb 'to look/see' in Japanese, miru 見る, you'll notice that the first character, 見, looks like the character for eye with little legs added on (the る, ru, is the verb ending). \n\nAs students go through school, they have new kanji introduced to them, along with the different pronunciations attatched to each, and they learn to incorporate the kanji into their writing, just the way English speakers learn to spell new words. Often times, you can tell how educated someone is by how much kanji they use. \n\nJapanese use all 3 alphabets in conjunction when writing. Hiragana is appended to the end of kanji characters to change verb meanings. For example, using 'to see' - 見る (miru) - again, if I wanted to change this verb to past tense - 'I saw', it would be come 見た (mita). the た is hiragana.\n\nAn example of all 3 alphabets in one sentence: 'I saw the computer' for example, would be 私はコンピュータを見た (watashi wa konpyuuta o mita). You have two kanji 私 (I) and 見 (the verb stem for 'to see'), katakana コンピュータ (computer, a foreign word), and then various bits of hiragana: は, を, and た - particles and verb endings. The sentence structure in Japanese is different from that in English, so I won't get into that. ",
"Depends on the language, Chinese primarily uses characters to represent ideas, concepts, nouns, etc. which can be formed into sentences. Japanese uses three different writing systems Hirigana for spelling out their words and particles (mostly simple looking ones あいうえお), katakana for foreign words (square looking ones アイウエオ ), and kanji which are the complex looking ones and typically have a meaning and are combined with the other two to make sentences. \n\nThe Kanji (車私元気 a few simple ones) represent a word or a idea and can be combined with other for other meanings 今 means now, 日 means day, and 今日 means today.",
" > Does every word have a unique symbol?\n\nGenerally, yes. There are instances where one symbol can mean multiple different things, like \"draw\" a picture vs. \"draw\" a card in English. But generally, each symbol stands for one concept.\n\n > Are there variants of the symbols that mean different permutations of a word?\n\nNot very often. Usually, you add additional symbols to the first one to add to its meaning. Kinda like hyphenation in English. e.g. \"boat\" vs \"sail-boat\".\n\n > I just have no clue what I'm even looking at with that stuff.\n\nYou picked just about the worst possible language to try and learn in three minutes. ;]\n\nJapanese has two native alphabets, kinda like normal and cursive in English. And then, because that wasn't enough, they went and borrowed like 10,000 symbols from Chinese and incorporated those into their language as well. (Though only about 2-3,000 of the 10,000 are \"in common use\".)\n\nThe two native alphabets are called Katakana and Hiragana. Usually called \"kata\" and \"hira\" for short. [See reference card here.](_URL_1_) It's difficult at first to distinguish these from each other - and from the Chinese type of characters. Kata usually has sharp corners and no curves, and is often used for writing words derived from foreign languages. Hira has curves and circular shapes, and is generally used for native words. Most of the \"letters\" in Hira and Kata are relatively simple - they can be drawn with at most three strokes of the hand. They are considered elementary school material, mostly for children and other people just learning the language. Their relative simplicity is what allows you to distinguish them from the Chinese-derived symbols, the kanji.\n\n[Kanji - these are the dense, thick, seventeen-strokes-to-write kind of characters.](_URL_3_) Kanji is probably what you think of when you think of when you think \"Japanese writing.\" But in fact, Kanji characters were borrowed from Chinese. Chinese calls these same kind of characters \"hanzi\". Which, if you'll notice, doesn't sound too different from \"kanji\". Some kanji have mutated since they were borrowed from Chinese, but in general kanji are very similar to the original hanzi characters they came from.\n\nKanji are generally built up from smaller symbols. These smaller symbols are called \"radicals\". [See incomplete list here.](_URL_2_)\n\nSome radicals can be complete kanji characters all by themselves. For instance, the small square that represents the word \"mouth\" can be used by itself to just indicate \"mouth\". Also, the radicals for the numbers 1 to 10 can also act as complete words. (Representing the numbers 1 through 10, natch.) But in general, you usually need to put several radicals together to form a full symbol. For example, if you take the radical for \"roof\" and place it above the radical for \"woman\", you make the word \"safe\" (\"an\"). \"woman under roof\" = \"safe/secure\", get it? How about one more example. Combine the radicals for \"grain\" (\"nogi\") and \"mouth\" (\"kisa\"), \"grain in mouth\" = \"peaceful/harmonious\" (\"wa\").\n\nBut don't let these simple examples mislead you. The meanings of kanji are not always easily extracted based on the radicals. You will find all sorts of wildly crazy combinations that don't make any sense. For example, the word for \"outside/foreign\" is \"gai\", which is composed of the radicals for \"evening\" and \"prophecy\". Just try and figure that one out! In general, to a beginner, trying to figure out a kanji character by the radicals ends up feeling like reading nonsense words jumbled together - [\"Monkey Apple Carburetor\"](_URL_4_) syndrome.\n\nFinally, as if all that doesn't make your head spin badly enough: Most kanji symbols have *two* pronunciations. One is the Japanese pronunciation (\"kun-yomi\") and one is the Chinese (\"on-yomi\"). You have to figure out which is correct by context and experience. One web page explained this two-sounds-for-same-concept as being like the latin roots of English characters. We know the word \"far\" as meaning \"a long distance away\", but we also instinctively understand that the latin prefix \"tele-\" can mean the same thing. For instance, \"tele-phone\" = \"long distance sounds\" and \"tele-vision\" = \"long distance seeing\".\n\nSometimes you'll get lucky, and whoever wrote the kanji will also write the correct pronunciation of a kanji in small kana or hira symbols, next to or underneath the kanji character. This is called \"furigana\". Most commonly found in comics or other literature aimed at younger people. But generally, you're on your own. Inability to figure out the correct pronunciation of a kanji isn't just a problem for foreigners. Obscure, old kanji (such as those used in family names) are sometimes mispronounced so much that they become new words, or take on the common but mistaken pronunciation.\n\n\nSo anyway, once you have your 10,000 or so commonly known kanji all built up from radicals, you can combine them together and make something like an English word. Actually, this is less like putting letters together, and more like putting concepts together. Like the \"sail-boat\" compound word example I gave earlier.\n\nFor instance, take the kanji for \"electricity\" (\"den\") and the word for \"car/cart\" (pronounced \"kuruma\" or \"sha\" depending on context) and combine them: \"densha\" (\"train\"). Here again we see that the combinations don't always add up to what you expect them to. Some people speculate that Japan's first contact with anything train-like was electric streetcars, hence the origin of the word for train aka \"electric cart.\"\n\nHm, that was probably a longer explanation than a 5 year old could digest. Oh well. Language is a very complicated thing. (\"Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?\") If it's any consolation, [the inability to comprehend foreign languages cuts both ways.](_URL_0_) ;]\n\ntl;dr - Japanese is hard, monkey apple carburetor, I like you come home and fuck my sister!\n\n**Edits:** For clarity in the on/kun-yomi stuff.",
"Japanese borrowed a huge chunk of its writing system - the symbols you're referring to, called kanji - from Chinese. This is why you'll see a lot of the same symbols in both languages, though they don't always have the same meaning and defintely not the same pronunciation.\n\nlivinglifeback gave some good examples. To expand on that, two of the writing systems, hiragana and katakana, have set alphabets. There are about 45 characters in each, and they are syllabic - meaning that instead of a letter, like in english (a b c d e, etc) they represent syllables - ra, re, ro, ru, ri... etc. Hiragana and katakana have *exactly* the same syllables, but only look different. For example, the ones livinglifeback used - あいうえお and アイウエオ are *both* a i u e o. These two alphabets are probably no harder to learn than the English alphabet, and you can fall back on them in Japanese writing when you don't know the kanji to use. \n\nKanji is a pictorial written language. That is, each symbol you see is a representative drawing of something. For example, the kanji for eye 目 is supposed to look like an eye turned on its side. In the verb 'to look/see' in Japanese, miru 見る, you'll notice that the first character, 見, looks like the character for eye with little legs added on (the る, ru, is the verb ending). \n\nAs students go through school, they have new kanji introduced to them, along with the different pronunciations attatched to each, and they learn to incorporate the kanji into their writing, just the way English speakers learn to spell new words. Often times, you can tell how educated someone is by how much kanji they use. \n\nJapanese use all 3 alphabets in conjunction when writing. Hiragana is appended to the end of kanji characters to change verb meanings. For example, using 'to see' - 見る (miru) - again, if I wanted to change this verb to past tense - 'I saw', it would be come 見た (mita). the た is hiragana.\n\nAn example of all 3 alphabets in one sentence: 'I saw the computer' for example, would be 私はコンピュータを見た (watashi wa konpyuuta o mita). You have two kanji 私 (I) and 見 (the verb stem for 'to see'), katakana コンピュータ (computer, a foreign word), and then various bits of hiragana: は, を, and た - particles and verb endings. The sentence structure in Japanese is different from that in English, so I won't get into that. "
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"http://www.japanese-symbols.org/japanese-alphabet",
"http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/japanese/kanjiradical.htm",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji",
"http://www.theforeigner-japan.com/archives/200404/sojapanese.php?comm_page=2"
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6hybyr | what exactly are people celebrating at pride events/month? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hybyr/eli5_what_exactly_are_people_celebrating_at_pride/ | {
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"The freedom to not be persecuted for one's sexual and gender choices..?",
"Being able to _have_ pride events/month without suffering serious negative consequences.\n\nIt's not as universal a situation as one might hope.",
"Its an expression of ones \"self\".\n\nMany of thsoe people come from backgrounds and environments where they feel the need to hide or are ostracized for because of their sexual preferences. Part of the LGBTQ community just got the right to marry in the US. All of them don't come from accepting backgrounds. \n\nSo the events are a chance to let go some of the frustrations of the real world. To be around people who they can identify with, something social creatures cherish. "
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1m0cw3 | why is robin thicke's "blurred lines" misogynistic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m0cw3/eli5_why_is_robin_thickes_blurred_lines/ | {
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"It is not particularly misogynistic in relation to a lot of other current and past pop music. Maybe it is a bit random to single out 'Blurred Lines' and you should ask 'why is pop music/popular culture misogynistic', to which I have no definite answer."
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ag6ry2 | how dangerous are x-rays | My doctor took 8 x-rays of my broken humerus in one week. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ag6ry2/eli5_how_dangerous_are_xrays/ | {
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"An X-Ray is in the µSv range of radiation. So you have gotten less then 100µSv of radiation from those X-Rays. This is less then half the radiation you get from the potassium in your body every year, about the radiation you get on a long flight or if you prefer the same amount as you get from eating around a hundred bananas. A CT scan would be a hundred times more radiation. So while X-Ray scans is considered dangerous it is not considered dangerous in those small numbers. Radiation protection during X-Rays is only applied to workers and not patients.",
"An extremety X-ray gives you a radiation dosage of 0.001 mSv (milli Sievert, the unit radiation doses are measured in).\n\nFor comparison a long haul flight will expose you to roughly 0.3 mSv of radiation, and general background radiation exposes you to around 2 mSv per year. So the 0.008 mSv over 7 days is not dangerous and nothing to be worried about.\n\nTo experience radiation posining or radiation induced cancer you'd have to get hour long chest x rays on a weekly basis "
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3e7tsb | venture capitalism | Not grasping the concept so I'm asking here.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e7tsb/eli5_venture_capitalism/ | {
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"Rich people give money to companies that are starting out for a stake in the company. So, Mark Zuckerberg is making Facebook but needs cash to start it. He meets with venture capitalists, shows them Facebook and explains why it will be successful. Some turn him down, but some don't and give him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fast forward 10 years, Facebook is work many billions of dollars, the venture capitalists get paid what they paid originally, and much much more on top of that, rich get richer. ",
"It is similar to buying stocks, but in a startup company. If someone had a great Idea, but no money, he can ask someone with money for some in exchange for like 30% of the company. If the company fails, the VC loses out, but if it does well, then the VC can sell the part of the company back to them for 30% of what the company is worth or, if they go public, sell it all on the stock market.",
"I'm an entrepreneur. I just started a company that might become the next Facebook, or it might become worthless. I need 10 million dollars for expenses. First I'd go to my family and friends for money. They might give me 1 million dollars as a group. I use that for a while, but now I need more money. No bank wants to loan me money because it's such a high risk investment. I'm a small private company, so I can't get money from the stock market. So I ask you for the money.\n\nYou are a multi-millionaire. You made your money in your own sucessful internet company, and now you have a ton of cash to invest. You invest some of it in regular companies like GE and Ford, but you want something more high risk and high reward. So you find a small company, in this case mine, and give me the money I need. In exchange, I give you 10% of the company. There is a huge chance that my company goes bankrupt and you lose all your money. But there is a tiny chance that my company will be worth 10 billion dollars and you're 10 million dollar investment will eventually become worth 1 billion dollars.\n\nIt's a big risk, but say there is a 10% chance of any one of your investments succeeding. If you invest in 10 of them, statistically, one of them will become successful. One success is likely worth way more than all the failures combined.\n\nSome investors focus exclusively on these types of high risk, high potential growth start up companies. They are called venture capitalists. Others private investors like private equity firms buy bigger more established companies. Some investors only focus on big well established publicly traded investments. The earlier you invest, the bigger the risk, but the bigger the reward.",
"It's like gambling with roulette. \n \nEach square you bet on has a different probability of winning. But it's really hard to predict which square will win. So you spread out your money over a number of squares, hoping that a few will turn out to be winners, while all others are losses. \n \nSome square will have higher probability (i.e. more established companies like Uber, Airbnb), while 95% of others have much less chance of success. So naturally, you'll put more money behind higher probability, with lower return. And a number of hail-mary's in the other squares. \n \nIn this case, squares = companies and you = investor / VC fund."
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3092hp | if you compress a solid enough, it will structurally fail. can a gas, compressed enough, fail? what exactly occurs? | Learning things in a statics course and was just curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3092hp/eli5_if_you_compress_a_solid_enough_it_will/ | {
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"If you compressed a gas enough, wouldn't it just become a liquid, then a solid?",
"A gas will compress into a liquid, which would then compress into a solid. ",
"A solid \"fails\" by allowing shear forces to deform it, as you describe it. Gasses and liquids are defined in a way where they don't hold up against such forces anyway so \"failure\" in such a case is instant and assured."
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34i76u | why isn't hacking and distributing paid cheats for a video game illegal? | Can't people who hack games and sell cheats (e.g. Aimware for FPS) be sued by developers/publishers for profiting off of copyright infringement on their product? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34i76u/eli5_why_isnt_hacking_and_distributing_paid/ | {
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"It is not necessarily illegal but it is against the TOS of whatever video game the hacks are made for. Therefore opening up the cheat creators to be sued in a court of law in a civil trial for compensation and damages. It has happened numerous times with the creators of bots for big name MMORPG's such as WoW being sued with Blizzard winning.",
"It probably violates the Terms of Service you agree to when starting the game, but legality is more complicated. The thing is, cheats are *modifications* to the game -- it's new code/assets/etc that the cheater made from scratch, although obviously you need the game for that stuff to be used. If the hacker just distributes his changes, and not any of the original game files themselves, then it's harder to get him in trouble, since he's just distributing his own stuff that doesn't contain any IP or copyrighted files."
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j4li8 | explain (like i'm five) music theory. | Keys, scales, whatever, I don't know anything about music theory at all and I'm willing to learn. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4li8/explain_like_im_five_music_theory/ | {
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"Honestly, it's far too detailed to do it any kind of justice in this subreddit. Since you're obviously NOT 5 :-)...\n\n[Check out this website and use the lessons. They're in a pretty good order and easy to follow. They have trainers to reinforce the concepts.](_URL_0_)",
"Start by imagining just a single sound, like a piano key being played once. A sound is a wave in air, and every wave has a particular frequency. Really high pitched sounds have waves that are very close together, and so they have a high frequency (because they occur frequently), low pitched sounds have long waves, and so a low frequency.\n\nIf you take a sound's frequency and double it (in other words, squish the waves together so they are half as long) the note has the same sound, just a higher pitch. This is called an octave. This is because the two notes would peak at the same time, with the higher frequency wave peaking once in between each lined up peak. It works the same if you double the frequency- it's the same sound, but an octave lower.\n\nIn western music, the octave is divided into 12 semitones. Think of all the black and white keys on a keyboard: there are 7 white keys and 5 black keys. If you play all of these at once, it sounds really bad (or dissonant). To make music, we use only a few of these notes, and we call the notes we've picked to use the key. There are many different patterns of notes to pick out, but the most common one is called the major scale. To make the pattern, you use what are called half-steps, and whole steps. A half step means the very next note, and a whole step means skipping a note. Starting from the note at the beginning of the scale (called the root note) the pattern goes: whole whole half whole whole whole half, with the last half step being between the last note of the scale and the root note an octave higher, starting the pattern again. The most common scale and root note is the C Major scale. The C major scale corresponds with the white keys of a keyboard.\nC^! D^! E F^! G^! A^! B C. The black keys (^! ) are the notes skipped in the whole steps. Notice that there are no black keys between the E & F and B & C: these correspond to the half steps in the C major scale. To play in any other major key, pick a different note as the root note and follow the same pattern.\n\nI think that's a decent start.",
"Notes are represented by letters A-G. A is the lowest, and G is the highest. To go higher or lower than those, you just start the alphabet over. For example, one note higher than G is A, and going below A is G. In order to read notes, they are put on a \"staff\". This staff is five horizontal lines stacked on top of one another. Most commonly, C is above the middle line of the staff, like [this](_URL_8_). To represent one note above that, a D note, a note is placed on top of the line above the C, like [this](_URL_1_). To represent other notes, simply move them up and down on the staff. Notes can go above and below the staff as well. One or more small lines, called ledger lines, can be drawn above or below the staff where there is a note that needs them. They simply make it look like there are more lines either above or below the note. This aids the musician in determining what the note is. [This picture](_URL_12_) makes it pretty clear what they are. Experienced musicians can simply look at a note and tell what it is immediately. This is how you read music.\n\nSmall note: if you go eight notes up from a note, you will reach a note with the same letter. It is not the same note, but it sounds very similar, only at a higher pitch. This is called an octave. Sing the first few words of \"somewhere over the rainbow\" out loud. Do you hear how the pitches you sing for \"Some.... WHERE!\" sound similar, but the second sounds higher? Those are octaves.\n\nOkay, so we know that each line/space on the staff is a different note. Great. You should also know that there are notes between these, as well. These are called flats or sharps. They are represented by a stylized-looking lowercase b (for flats) or an italicized number sign (for sharps) placed before the note. For example, [this](_URL_3_) is a d-sharp, and [this](_URL_0_) is a d-flat. Here's something you need to remember about flats and sharps: the flat of one note is that same as the sharp of the note below it. Here is an easy way to think of this: on a piano, the white keys are normal (Called *natural*) notes, and the black keys are flat/sharp notes. If you put a finger on the black key above D and the black key below E, you are touching the same key. \n\nNow that we know how to read the pitches of notes, let's learn lengths. The [quarter note](_URL_14_) is the most common. It takes up one beat (most of the time, this is different in more advanced situations). Pat your leg at a steady beat and say \"doo, doo, doo, doo\" in time with it. This is how a quarter note works. Next is the [half note](_URL_2_). It is twice the length of a quarter note, taking up two beats. Continue to pat your leg, but repeat the sound \"doo\" only once for every two pats, sustaining it until your next noise. Next is the [whole note](_URL_10_). It is four times the length of a quarter note. Pat your leg, and hold out a \"doo\" for four pats. Not too hard, right? Well, meet [eighth notes](_URL_15_). They are half the length of a quarter note. Pat your leg and say \"doo day\" once per pat. the pat should line up with the \"doo\", and the \"day\" should lie between the pats. See how each of those notes are half a beat? [Sixteenth notes](_URL_7_) are even shorterSay the phrase \"Doo tah day tah\" Once per pat. Again, line up the \"doo\" with the pat. the \"day\" should stay halfway between pats, like it was with the eighth notes, but then the \"tah\"s are between the \"doo\"s and the \"day\"s. It's not too hard when you get it down, just remember that a sixteenth note is one-quarter of a beat, and eighth is half a beat, a quarter note is one beat, a half note is two times one beat, and a whole note is four times one beat. What if we want counts in between those? No problem. Add a dot on the right side of a note, and it's count is suddenly multiplied by 1.5. A \"dotted\" half note is worth 3 beats, for example, and a dotted whole note is worth 6! A dotted quarter note is 1 and a half beats, OR a quarter note and an eighth note combined in to one note. Crazy, huh? [Here is a picture showing them](_URL_6_). You can even add more than one dot! the second dot is worth half of half (one quarter), and a third dot is worth half of half of half (an eighth). BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. Dotted things can be expressed more visually as [tied notes](_URL_5_). Tied notes are denoted by a curved line connecting the two (or more) ovals, and tells you that these notes should be played seamlessly, without stopping. They are very similar to dots. [Here is a picture comparing them.](_URL_13_) In all of my staff examples, quarter notes have been on the staff. Know that all of these new notes are placed on the staff in exactly the same way, with their oval shapes between or on top of the lines, depending on the note.\n\nAnother small note: eighth notes and sixteenth notes, when written next to each other, can be written in a special way. Successive eighth notes can be connected [like so](_URL_9_). [Here](_URL_11_) is an example of four eighth notes connected. It can go on forever. Sixteenth notes are very similar, except that they have two parallel lines connecting them, like [this](_URL_4_). Also, you may have noticed at some point that the stem (the long part coming off notes) sometimes flips upside-down. This is just to save space, and is usually done when a note is on the higher half of the staff.\n\n___\n\n\n***CONTINUED AS A COMMENT***\n",
"The best way I can think of to explain music theory simply HOW music functions the way it does. Think of it as chemistry. On the most basic level, think of a musical note as a basic chemical compound. When you mix it with another compound, a reaction occurs and creates something entirely different. Music theory is basically trying to understand these reactions.\n\nLet's take a major scale. A major scale is made up of seven distinct notes (or chemicals) that, when mixed in large increments (whole notes) and small increments (half notes) following a specific order (whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole half), form a compound that sounds \"pleasant\". We call this combination a major scale. If we are to start this compound or scale on C, it is the C major scale (CDEFGABC). It'd be like if you poured a bunch of different colored chemicals together and the outcome was \"yellow\".\n\nHowever, if we rearrange these exact same notes and mix them in a different order (whole, half, whole whole, half whole, whole, whole) we get an A minor scale (ABCDEFGA) which traditionally, sounds \"sad\". It's the same chemicals put together, but because they were mixed differently, the outcome is \"blue\".\n\nMusic theory is basically figuring out how things like this work. Like combining different chemicals and seeing how they react. I mean...you can break it down to the basic level above...or you can break down at the \"John Coltrane\" level (Just for fun, a complicated example: In Giant Steps, the first sequence is taking the root, going up a minor third, which becomes the V of the next key change. This pattern repeats twice...the second part is a repeats ii, VI, I, tritone pattern. Here, a jazz musician must found out HOW this pattern operates)",
"Most of music is not just random sounds; it is very much organized. Music theory basically explains how artists can organize sounds to achieve a unique style or effect. This can apply to almost all types of music and of vastly different genres. What makes Mozart sound different from Buddy Holly? Music theory can explain it.",
"Music theory is essentially the study and exploration of patterns in music, so start studying and exploring! Some of the best music theory you will ever learn will be discovered by just playing around with an instrument by yourself."
]
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"http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01262/d-flat.png",
"http://www.bagpipe-tutorials.com/image-files/d-note.jpg",
"http://www.abcteach.com/free/h/half_note_bw.jpg",
"http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01262/d-sharp.png",
"http://www.websters-on... | |
9yp68s | what are the mental health downsides to suppressing emotions in non-medical terms? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9yp68s/eli5_what_are_the_mental_health_downsides_to/ | {
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"Your emotions build and eventually those suppressed emotions will be brought to light and you'll be forced to deal with them. ",
"If you have a broken bone, it’s not gonna heal itself without attention. Say you break it and the bone is shattered. It’s gonna hurt for longer. And after all the time of suffering, your arm is still broken, it might be harder to fix now, it might have healed incorrectly, and you could’ve had a healed bone by now. \n\nSort of my thoughts on mental healing and processing emotions. "
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[],
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1zk6v2 | why do car companies such as volkswagen continue to make cars that sell for a loss? | For example each Bugatti Veyron sells for a 6.27M loss.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zk6v2/eli5_why_do_car_companies_such_as_volkswagen/ | {
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"Because its not about winning on that car, its about winning across **all** of their cars.\n\nThe Veyron is literally sex on 4 wheels. Its doing a ton for Volkswagen's marketing and is basically free press. So even if the Veyrons are not worth it, the additional cars they'll sell that are profitable (thanks to the free publicity) are worth it."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.worldcarfans.com/113093063599/volkswagen-losing-an-unbelievable-627m-usd-for-each-bugatti"
] | [
[]
] | |
2v232c | how do contact lenses work since they can't be shaped like regular concave or convex lenses in glasses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v232c/eli5_how_do_contact_lenses_work_since_they_cant/ | {
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"Glasses (as you are imagining) are a single lens curved to affect the focal point inside the eye thus correcting for poor eyesight. Contacts are not a single 'layer', they are [many layers](_URL_1_), each obscuring light a little bit each, and eventually forcing the focal point to be correct for the individual prescription. \n\nThe TV show \"How it's made\" had an episode on them. S1E1\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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"http://cpn.canon-europe.com/files/education/infobank/lenses/multi_layer_diffractive_optical_element/caption_001.jpg"
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k3eu0 | patent war and why everyone is mad at apple. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k3eu0/eli5_patent_war_and_why_everyone_is_mad_at_apple/ | {
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"I'll take a stab at this one.\n\nPatents describe and protect ideas/concepts for products/inventions. The idea is that if you make something and sell it, somebody can't just duplicate it and steal your market. They can make a knockoff, but only if it looks/operates sufficiently differently, and/or approaches the same goal with a different method. In short, patents protect you from copiers.\n\nThe patent war that Apple is involved in is just that system coming to light. Patents can get pretty vague (some argue that the system is broken) especially with software and EVERYONE patents EVERY little thing. All these big companies have large patent portfolios and technically speaking, nobody can do what their patents say unless they pay/ask the patentholder. These companies compete, so they make each other pay. So what's happening is this web of giant tech companies are seeking legal action against each other for ever conceivable possible violation of their patents. The goal is to delay product launches, or force them to make undesirable changes, or collect damages and royalties. The courts then have to decide which patents are being violated by whom (like I said, a lot of patents are vague and they may not actually hold up in court).",
"edit: In order to -not- tl;dr it and misconstrue things, I've added some links and reworded a thing or two.\n\n\nSimple.\n\n1. Apple patent shit that other people invented such as the [multitouch display](_URL_1_) and other ridiculous things like a 'thin tablet'[source here](_URL_5_) which may be works of entertainment, is still a decent case for arguing against that patent.\n\n2. They then attack anyone who slightly infringes on it in some cases by [photoshopping](_URL_8_) [evidence](_URL_4_) and taking them to court [all around the world](_URL_6_).\n\n3. After that people have enough of their shit ([Samsung](_URL_7_), [Openwave](_URL_2_), [HTC](_URL_0_)) and sue them back.\n\n4. Apple are now saying THOSE guys are anti competitive and bullies [source](_URL_3_).\n\nDISCLOSURE: I think Apple have done wonders for innovating the tech industry but they're absolute asshats with their legal department. Beyond that I don't really use their hardware or software.",
"This episode of public radio's [This American Life](_URL_0_) explains a lot about what's happening with patents and shell companies and the like.",
"Separately, another reason people hate Apple is because there's nothing really amazing about their products that bring them to another level that other similar products aren't, yet they charge stupid prices (this is especially true for any Macbook or Mac computer) and stupid consumers pay them because it's Apple.",
"I'll take a stab at this one.\n\nPatents describe and protect ideas/concepts for products/inventions. The idea is that if you make something and sell it, somebody can't just duplicate it and steal your market. They can make a knockoff, but only if it looks/operates sufficiently differently, and/or approaches the same goal with a different method. In short, patents protect you from copiers.\n\nThe patent war that Apple is involved in is just that system coming to light. Patents can get pretty vague (some argue that the system is broken) especially with software and EVERYONE patents EVERY little thing. All these big companies have large patent portfolios and technically speaking, nobody can do what their patents say unless they pay/ask the patentholder. These companies compete, so they make each other pay. So what's happening is this web of giant tech companies are seeking legal action against each other for ever conceivable possible violation of their patents. The goal is to delay product launches, or force them to make undesirable changes, or collect damages and royalties. The courts then have to decide which patents are being violated by whom (like I said, a lot of patents are vague and they may not actually hold up in court).",
"edit: In order to -not- tl;dr it and misconstrue things, I've added some links and reworded a thing or two.\n\n\nSimple.\n\n1. Apple patent shit that other people invented such as the [multitouch display](_URL_1_) and other ridiculous things like a 'thin tablet'[source here](_URL_5_) which may be works of entertainment, is still a decent case for arguing against that patent.\n\n2. They then attack anyone who slightly infringes on it in some cases by [photoshopping](_URL_8_) [evidence](_URL_4_) and taking them to court [all around the world](_URL_6_).\n\n3. After that people have enough of their shit ([Samsung](_URL_7_), [Openwave](_URL_2_), [HTC](_URL_0_)) and sue them back.\n\n4. Apple are now saying THOSE guys are anti competitive and bullies [source](_URL_3_).\n\nDISCLOSURE: I think Apple have done wonders for innovating the tech industry but they're absolute asshats with their legal department. Beyond that I don't really use their hardware or software.",
"This episode of public radio's [This American Life](_URL_0_) explains a lot about what's happening with patents and shell companies and the like.",
"Separately, another reason people hate Apple is because there's nothing really amazing about their products that bring them to another level that other similar products aren't, yet they charge stupid prices (this is especially true for any Macbook or Mac computer) and stupid consumers pay them because it's Apple."
]
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[],
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"http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/16/htc-sues-apple-patents/",
"http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html",
"http://www.mobiledia.com/news/105992.html",
"http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22586",
"http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Caught+Using+Photoshop+to+Fake+More+Pics+i... | ||
6tm17a | is genetic diversity almost always a good thing? | For example people of different races or ethnic background, do they usually breed genetically stronger offspring? Being that the genetic code has more resources available when creating said human? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tm17a/eli5_is_genetic_diversity_almost_always_a_good/ | {
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"The most important effect in this is not necessarily that different ethnicities create *better* offspring, but that the genetic defects that permeate individual populations are far less likely to be present in both parents if they are from different populations. It means that children with mixed ethnicities are less likely to express those defects because they have received a \"healthy\" chromosome from one of their parents. They can still pass on the defective one to their children however and it takes a few child generations for the defect to become less and less prevalent ",
"It's mostly about avoiding \"bad\" things. Women have 2 X chromosomes, men an X and a Y. When they have a child the child gets one chromosome from each parent. A girl gets an X from dad and an X from mom, a boy gets a Y from dad and an X from mom.\n\nLet's posit a theory that Dad has a bad X. If they have a boy, no problem because it'll have Dad's good Y and a good X from mom. If they have a girl it'll get a bad X from dad but have a backup copy in mom's X. So the little girl has one bad X and one good X.\n\nNow in a population with a limited number of people, that bad X is going to be present in lots of people, boys and girls, but it's mostly OK because they have another chromosome as a backup. \n\nExcept for one day, bad X Billy and bad X Betty have a baby. It's a girl so she gets Billy's bad X, and through the luck of the draw also gets Bettys bad X. So now baby Betsy has 2 bad X chromosomes and you see defects.\n\nNormally those bad chromosomes have to be bad in the same kind of way in order for there to be a high chance of defects. That can happen in a small population, but different tribes are likely to have bad chromosomes that are bad in different ways. So the body is able to cobble together enough human code to make 1 good human. 2 bad copies are fine as long as they are differently bad, 2 of the same bad copy means you have no copy of the good code and everything gets fucked up. ",
"The genetic advantage distinction is different between individuals and populations. A single child of parents of wide genetic background may or may not benefit, it's kind of a crap shoot about what you're going to get in a one-off birth. \n\nA POPULATION that incorporates a wider genetic background is almost certainly stronger, though, simply because there are fewer individuals of one genetic background. A situation change that could wipe out that specific genetic background cannot as easily wipe out the entire population due to the diversity. ",
"It was at one time. Diversity was good because you couldn't predict the future. You couldn't tell what would make people better suited to live tomorrow. Maybe something would come by that would favor a trait that no one in your group has, and that could be devastating for the group.\n\nSo you diversify so that you have a large variety of people. Selective pressure then comes by, and kills the less fit people (and/or lets the more fit people breed more) and then those once-alternative genes become mainstream. And the process repeats. The more diverse you are, the better chance *someone* or some subgroup will be sufficiently equipped to handle it.\n\nIn a world without significant selection pressure, arguing that genetic diversity is unequivocally good may not automatically be true. You certainly want to have a diverse enough population group that recessive genes don't get paired up often, (avoid family up to first or second cousins) but beyond that it may not make much of a difference. Human kind has descended from bottle-necked populations before. At plenty of times in our history the number of humans alive has been under a million. Half the countries in the world, if isolated, would still have a far richer gene pool to mix around than in many times in our species' history.\n\nIt would be interesting to see studies on the health, fitness, intelligence, etc of 'muts'. Of people that are the children of two people from very separate population groups. Say, a father that's been Germanic for 8 generations and a woman whose been Chinese for the same time.",
"In addition to reducing negative homogeneous genes (like /u/searingsky explains);\n\nA more genetically diverse population can withstand a wider range of changes to its environment. You need both 'good' and 'bad' genes in the gene-pool because you don't know what the next crisis is going to bring. \n\nIf a certain food-source suddenly becomes available, it's genetically advantageous to have individuals that can process that food source (Lactose Tolerance and certain Food Allergies). \n\nIf a certain blood-parasite becomes rampant, it's genetically advantageous to have blood that can't carry the pathogen (Sickle-cell Anemia) "
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20dqwc | when wealthy people buy expensive house, in the millions, do they pay monthly like usual or do they just pay the millions up front? | Random curiosity. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20dqwc/eli5_when_wealthy_people_buy_expensive_house_in/ | {
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"Really it would depend on what mortgage rate they get. If they get a rate of say 5%, but their typical investment return is 8%, it's better for them to mortgage it and instead invest the money they would have spent paying cash for the house."
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1d02gt | how does a company (say, edward jones) benefit from having a charitable foundation arm (like edward jones charitable foundation)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d02gt/eli5_how_does_a_company_say_edward_jones_benefit/ | {
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"It's called Corporate Social Responsibility. Basically means that a company returns what it received from society. Just look at how many charities McDonalds have. It neutralises all the debate about how unhealthy they are. Also boosts the company's reputation, and thus becomes a good marketing source as well. \n\nRemember how Apple and Steve Jobs got bashed because They both **never** donated, compared to MS and Bill Gates giving up so much money? That's CSR in a nutshell.",
"To add to the points on the social responsibility, the public image and the goodwill itself, there's also a *tax aspect* to be considered. This could, and it some cases does, form up a significant benefit when it comes to reducing taxes. [This gentleman](_URL_0_) wrote about it in more detail and also explains organising the setup.\n\nFoundations might also serve as a leverage for lobbyism activities. This means in both directions, so please don't read it with a negative bias.\n\n*Edit: wording*"
]
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3z9rhg | how do my eye balls simultaneously move at the same time and in the same direction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z9rhg/eli5_how_do_my_eye_balls_simultaneously_move_at/ | {
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"There is a region in our brainstem that coordinates the movements. \n\n\nA message is sent simultaneously to different regions of the nervous system so that certain actions occur at once.\n\nFor example, if the brainstem receives a signal that you need to/want to look to the right:\n\nThe right eye needs to abduct (look out/to your ear) and he left eye needs to adduct (look to your nose) in order to look to the right\n\n2 different cranial nerves are involved in that, and are activated simultaneous once the brain has made the decision to look right.\n\nSo: Cranial nerve #6 is activated for the right eye, and simultaneously cranial nerve #3 is activated for the left eye.\n\n\n\n\n[Paramedian pontine reticular formation](_URL_1_)\n\n[Medial longitudinal fasciculus](_URL_0_)",
"The eyeballs simultaneously moving is a process known as [Conjugate Eye Movements](_URL_0_).\n\nThis occurs via a very [complex mechanism](_URL_2_) involving multiple cranial nerves, interneurons, various nuclei in the brain, and a number of muscles that control the movements of the eyes.\n\nIf you are looking for the details of the whole process, this [video](_URL_1_) provides a pretty basic description of the process in the horizontal plane (it's similar in the vertical plane but uses different muscles and neurons).\n\nIn brief, think about your eyes as if you are looking at them from above. On each side of each eye is a muscle that pulls toward the back of your head. If the muscle on the left side of your left eye contracts, your left eye will look to the left. If the muscle on the left side of your right eye contracts, your right eye will look left. \n\nWhen you decide to look to the left, your brain sends signals to a nucleus in the brainstem telling the muscle on the left side of the left eye to contract. It simultaneous sends a signal via an interneuron to the nucleus controlling the muscle on the left side of the right eye to also contract. You're two eyes will now both look left.",
"To go off of the post, why then can we go cross-eyed?"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAz_g3FDPjw",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons... | ||
7qnp8g | if tobacco companies add chemicals like arsenic and acetone to cigarettes, how do they not kill people much quicker? what’s the purpose of adding those chemicals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qnp8g/eli5_if_tobacco_companies_add_chemicals_like/ | {
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" > If tobacco companies add chemicals like arsenic and acetone to cigarettes\n\nIn general they do not. Those are naturally occurring components of burning tobacco leaves, not something the companies are deliberately adding to their product. Cigarette companies have a vested interest in keeping smokers alive and smoking as long as possible, they aren't going to be adding harmful things to their products just for giggles. It just turns out that burning plant leaves produces harmful fumes."
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[]
] | ||
bgkndg | how do non-pendulum mechanical clocks keep constant time? | For instance, how do small pocket watches keep a constant pace at different windings? This has been surprisingly difficult to find on Google. I have found that typically these sorts of clocks are powered by spring, but shouldn't the force of that spring change based on how wound your spring is? If that's the case then shouldn't your time keeping device slow down as the spring unwinds? In fact in my search I came across Hooke's Law which seems to suggest exactly that. How do mechanical clock designs get around this issue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgkndg/eli5_how_do_nonpendulum_mechanical_clocks_keep/ | {
"a_id": [
"ellko66"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nUnsurprisingly, Hooke solved this issue with another spring, again using his law. The mainspring drives a balance wheel, which is hooked up to a balance spring or hairspring. The balance wheel and hairspring form a harmonic oscillator; no matter the driving force (aside from that too weak to force an oscillation or too strong for the material to withstand), the balance wheel rotates at the same rhythm.\n\nThe stronger the mainspring pushes, the more it compresses the balance spring and delays the oscillation. Similarly, as the mainspring weakens, it compresses the balance spring less, which speeds up the return. The net effect is that the oscillation is regular for the majority of the mainspring’s winding."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_wheel"
]
] | |
35zplm | why do do girls' hips rock from side to side while guys's hips don't seem to do anything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35zplm/eli5_why_do_do_girls_hips_rock_from_side_to_side/ | {
"a_id": [
"cr9c58c",
"cr9cmfp"
],
"score": [
3,
6
],
"text": [
"They do, you just don't notice it because they're not as wide and our attire doesn't show off/exaggerate the hips. Also guys usually walk in 2 rows, while women in skirts (usually tight enough to hug the hips) generally walk in a single row.\n\n-edit-\n\nNot that I was looking or anything.... ;)",
"The female pelvis is flatter, more rounded and proportionally larger to assist childbirth. The sacrum (back of the pelvis) also shorter, wider and angled backwards for the same reason. The female waist-hip ratio contributes to hip sway when walking in order to balance the weight. Men sway, though less. \n\nHaving a waist allows humans to walk as we do."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
4kkgto | what is the difference between acne face/body washes when they all have the same active ingredient (salicylic acid, usually 2%)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kkgto/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_acne_facebody/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3fkzzx",
"d3flz4j"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The other ingredients can be different, they can be anything from moisturisers and vitamins to help keep your skin from drying out after using salicylic acid on it to something just as simple as a coloring agent to make the liquid a different color.",
"They don't all have the same active ingredient.\n\nAcne control chemicals can fall into two categories, AHAs (alpha hydroxy acids) and BHAs (beta hydroxy acids)that are used to treat different problems. They are both soluble in different ways, which affects the way that they penetrate the skin. \n\n Salicylic acid is called a BHA (beta hydroxy acid), which means it is dissolves oils more effectively. Most people's primary concern when they think of acne is \"get this oil off my face\", which salicylic acid does pretty well. It also dries out your skin, which makes it very marketable because often people don't care about the chemistry behind what they're buying but rather how it feels on their skin. Your face will probably feel stiff and dry afterwards which tricks you into thinking it's working. \n\nSome washes might have microbeads to \"help\" exfoliate. They might be scented or unscented or have different concentrations of salicylic acid (I use one with 1.5%). The answer to your specific question is more of a marketing thing, as besides the active ingredient in face wash specifically not much else matters, but the broader answer is that there are five or six other active ingredients found in face wash. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
43h3h0 | why is sprint more expensive than other carriers that use sprints network? | I keep reading how other low cost cellular companies uses sprints network. How can they charge such a low rate when sprint is always higher for the same or less service? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43h3h0/eli5_why_is_sprint_more_expensive_than_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"czi974n"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Part of it is that the prepaid carriers often have slower service and limited access. Virgin mobile is owned by sprint, so they're still making money off it. A lot of times they will advertise unlimited data but it's usually throttled after a certain speed. Not the case for all providers but several times that's the reason. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
3zx9ml | why do so many sports leagues run over autumn, winter and spring where for most it would make more sense to run spring, summer, autumn for better weather? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zx9ml/eli5_why_do_so_many_sports_leagues_run_over/ | {
"a_id": [
"cypq3uz",
"cypqk1c"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Playing sports in the hot sun is the worst, I would rather play in snow than in sweltering heat any day (playing in the snow is fun) You can play baseball in the summer because it is not that physically demanding. Playing football in the summer just means that several of your linemen are probably going to get heat stroke. So to answer your question, sports DO run when they do to take advantage of the weather, the weather appropriate for that sport.",
"Football and basketball were created at schools so they naturally follow the school year. Baseball was played as a pastime during the summer months. And hockey kinda needs it to be cold enough for ice."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
62mcue | since the fda cannot regulate homeopathy and supplemental drugs because of extracting quantifiable amounts of active ingredients from plants, why can we not enforce a process by which many plants are blended together and sampled for the correct active ingredient level? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62mcue/eli5_since_the_fda_cannot_regulate_homeopathy_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfnnojb"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Homeopathy has no active ingredients so that would put a hard stop to that idea. \"Supplements\" may have active ingredients but are unregulated mainly because they don't legally claim to do anything. They don't *want* to be regulated."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
1wl3bo | machine learning vs artificial intelligence | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wl3bo/eli5_machine_learning_vs_artificial_intelligence/ | {
"a_id": [
"cf303nr"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence, concerned with systems that *learn from experience* how to improve their performance at some task. This is different from for example a robot mapping its environment in order to improve its navigation - the robot is gathering more data but using it in the same way while a learning agent uses experience to adjust *how it approaches its task*. Both are AI, however."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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