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3dltub | how can "hazing" be permitted in such a litigious society like the us? | So much of this behavior seems demeaning and could result in a result in criminal charges if committed in public. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dltub/eli5how_can_hazing_be_permitted_in_such_a/ | {
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"It isn't permitted - most activities involved in hazing are illegal in varying capacities, and nearly all colleges/sports teams have explicit rules governing hazing. When I started college and considered joining a fraternity I figured this would be a pretty big issue when I rushed. It wasn't. I didn't join a frat, but I had a few friends do it and none of them were hazed. In fact, I can't think of a single fraternity on that campus that hazed any of their members. The only thing that happened that could be considered hazing would be making the pledges drink until they blacked out a lot, but honesty that's pretty much the norm for any college party. Not to mention the fact that much more illegal things than underage/forced drinking were happening in the houses.",
"Yeah Im in high school and our swim team was notorious for hazing. My class was the first class that experienced zero hazing, hell the seniors were practically bending over backwards being nice to us. The reason for this was that any freshman could report a senior which would result in the seniors explusion from the team and possible jail time."
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4g1w0m | parallel universe theory. specifically, what is the theory trying to prove, or what questions is it trying to answer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g1w0m/eli5_parallel_universe_theory_specifically_what/ | {
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"It's my understanding that the multiverse, or the idea that there are many universes outside of our own, came about through String Theory. String Theory attempts to unify relativity and quantum mechanics, two fundamental concepts of physics that haven't yet fully integrated, in order to create a single theory that can explain how our Universe works, dubbed the 'Theory of Everything'. Some of the mathematics for ST requires more dimensions than the three we live in, which has led some physicists to hypothesize that there are a lot more than just three. You can see where I'm taking this discussion. Some scientists also believe that there are several universes instead of one, possibly with their own laws, elements, and lifeforms. While the multiverse is better described as a hypothesis, not a theory, because there is no experimental data to support the claim, and critics argue that the hypothesis is not falsifiable and borders on pseudoscience, famous scientists like Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil deGrasse Tyson all believe it to be a possibility.\n\nIf another universe were to be discovered, or several universes for that matter, our understanding of physics and the natural world would be revolutionized. There are a lot of implications, but I will focus on the most important one: it would prove that we are not alone in this world, and that the birth of our Universe was not due to a one-night stand. Physicists would want to observe and study these other worlds, possibly unveiling some of the deepest, darkest secrets about our existence and creation. As an added bonus, humans of the future could develop technology that allowed travel to-and-from these other places. \n\nBefore ending, I would like to make it clear that I'm not a physicist; I'm a redditor. If you're truly interested in parallel universes and the implications, then here is a fantastic book written by Brian Greene (a theoretical physicist and professor at Columbia University) that is easy to read and will introduce you to the subject material better than I ever could. Hope I helped answer your question!",
"Great explanations above. I am going to do an uber simplified one. \n\nThink of a 2D graph of motion only showing movement is N/S and E/W directions. Only looking at this graph you miss all vertical movement. So if you are also measuring energy there are unexplained gains and losses. If you add a third dimension (height) you can now account for a lot of the unexplained observations. \n\nThe basic idea behind having multiple dimensions is that is may help to explain abnormalities that cannot be accounted for. (Think of adding more variables to a line of best fit to exactly match the data set) \n\nHave a great day! :-) "
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1b3j5x | - what the gallbladder does, who it works for/with, why i, at 32 am having attacks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b3j5x/eli5_what_the_gallbladder_does_who_it_works/ | {
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"I had my gall bladder removed about 6 years ago, so I can tell you what happens when you don't have one and how the doctor explained it to me.\n\nYour gall bladder acts as a storage place for the bile and other digestive bits that your liver produces (salts, etc). This is helpful because when you eat, your body needs those things injected into the digestive tract to properly process your food (especially fat).\n\nWhen your gall bladder is removed, your liver has to regulate itself. Your liver doesn't really like to pay attention, and it doesn't have an internal storage compartment, really. So it learns when you eat, and when that time hits, it dumps all that stuff into your digestive tract.\n\nIn summary, without a gall bladder, you have a harder time digesting fatty and greasy food. I find that if I keep a very strict eating schedule I have few problems (eat within +/- 30 minutes of the same times every day). If I stray from that, I get very unpleasant stomach aches from unneeded digestive bile and such being secreted into my digestive tract when there is no food there."
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6s9nwo | why is hotel internet/cell service always so terrible. | I travel a lot for work and end up in hotels pretty frequently. But no matter what kind of hotel I end up, 9/10 times the internet is just awful, and not just slow but it will just DROP every few minutes. If I’m on my phone and not on wifi, that’s usually degraded to 3G/4G and not LTE. I just did a speed test on my phone and 1mbs down on cellular and .625mbs down on wifi. Why is this, and is there any way to make it better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s9nwo/eli5_why_is_hotel_internetcell_service_always_so/ | {
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"Lots of people concentrated in a small area all trying to use the same resources at the same time. Want fast hotel internet? Try it at 10 am on a weekday (if there are no conferences going on). Some hotels also now cap basic service and want you to pay for faster access. So they have \"free\" internet but it's only about 2-3mb/s. \n\nDitto for cell phones. A few hundred people in your hotel all trying to use the same cell sites to get better internet than the shitty hotel wifi. "
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2gdmfw | why on tv shows do they often avoid specifying amounts of money? | On various sitcoms I've watched like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men when anyone asks how much something cost, they either say for example: 'A crapload' in HIMYM, or on TAAHM they've written it down to avoid disclosing the actual amount. Anyone know why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gdmfw/eli5_why_on_tv_shows_do_they_often_avoid/ | {
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"Possibly just to avoid the show seeming dated in the next decade due to inflation.",
"I've noticed this too, and here's my theory. Everyone in the audience has a different idea of what a crapload of money means. To some people, $50 per person at a restaurant is a lot of money; to others, it's nothing. Some would say $500k for a house is ridiculously expensive, while others would say it's $5 million. By avoiding disclosing the actual amount, everyone makes their own assumption about what that dollar amount would be, and we get to make it relative to our personal frame of reference.\n\nIn 30 Rock, Jack writes down the starting salary for an executive on a piece of paper. Based on that salary, Liz immediately decides she wants to give up her dream job and \"go corporate.\" If we polled Reddit to ask what that salary is, we'd get varying answers. $60k. $100k. $400k. If they would have written down $60k in the show, then the people out there making $80k would have thought, \"that's nothing. Why is she so excited?\" By leaving out the number, the audience gets to imagine it's whatever number seems like a high number relative to their own situation."
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260dl8 | how easy is it for a professional athlete to avoid failing a performance enhancing drug test? | Can't a player load up on PEDs in the off season then "cleanse" his system before the season starts up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/260dl8/eli5how_easy_is_it_for_a_professional_athlete_to/ | {
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"text": [
"As easy as buyin a whizzinator?"
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9azpbh | why is it bad to starve if we have fat reserves? | Can we not just take nutrient pills and otherwise "starve" until our "reserves" are used up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9azpbh/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_starve_if_we_have_fat/ | {
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"You need to have a certain per cent fat on your body to operate. The function for the reserve is to regulate the hormones and keep your body warm and your organs isolated, as well as serve as back up energy reserves in case of emergency. Fat in itself is nothing but fuel to keep your body running. In order to get enough nutrients you need to have a balanced diet. Food waste also carries with it a lot of excess toxins that are produced along the body in the digestive tracts. If you don’t get these toxic build ups exposed you will die. ",
"Fat doesn't actually have everything we need to survive, it is best as a supplement to low food intake rather than no food intake. Your proposed fictional \"nutrient pills\" would presumably cover that but, being fictional, aren't really an option.\n\nInstead we should just eat a little to get critical nutrients then let the fat be burned to supplement the lack of calories. This is called a \"diet\" and people just won't do them."
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4h79uo | why is making your heart work harder good for it? | (running/working out) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h79uo/eli5_why_is_making_your_heart_work_harder_good/ | {
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"Your heart also has muscles, just like in your arms and legs. Making it work harder for a little while helps to build the strength of the heart. In turn, the heart is able to pump harder thus supplying oxygen to your body more efficiently. It's also able to pump fewer times to get the same amount of oxygenated blood to your body. All this means that even when you're not exercising, your heart doesn't have to work as hard. ",
"There are lots of factors that go into this, I'll suggest a few here: \n\nDirect: \n- the heart, like any muscle, can be augmented by exercise (in fit and young people especially). One measure of heart failure is how large the heart is (in illness) but athletes can have larger hearts because they're working out all the time \n\nIndirect: \n- thinking about the things I think you were suggesting, namely exercise, they are better for the cardiovascular tube generally. There are a couple of risk factors to disease of the heart when you're older such as obesity, diabetes and high lipids (like cholesterol). Frequent exercise directly reduces incidence of heart failure and diabetes when coupled with weight loss. Exercise and a good diet also directly contribute to the reduction of body Low Density Lipids (LDLs) which are bad fats, and promote the uptake if High Density Lipids (HDLs) which are good fats. \n\nThink about it like this, the heart is a pump, and vessels are the pipes. Having a poor lifestyle means that the pipes get clogged with limescale and this does make the heart work harder as other commenters have mentioned but for no gain (hard work + blocked pipes = knackered pump). In a more efficient system, the pipes stay clear of limescale, and a functioning pump ensures constant circulation\n\nTaking drugs when you don't need them that make the heart work harder like cocaine can lead to it being knackered earlier. Kind of like when you're in a car and you shift down a gear at a high speed and it revs like crazy as it tries to cope with the reduced load. \n\nTl;Dr - working the heart is good as long as it's in keeping with the rest of the body. "
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2auliz | why are all phone charger cables the same length (read: so short)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2auliz/eli5_why_are_all_phone_charger_cables_the_same/ | {
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"I assume you mean the cables bundled with phones? In that case, it's simple - because it's much cheaper to produce (or purchase) short cables in bulk which saves the manufacturer a pretty penny.",
"They aren't. I specifically bought some on Amazon that are longer so I can charge and use it in bed. Just look at the dimensions when you're searching. ",
"The usb specification says that the maximum cable length is 9 get 10 inches. If you want to send data over the cake reliably the cake can't be longer than that. (If all you want to do is charge your phone then that probably doesn't matter. (",
"_URL_0_\n\nthey're not, you've just gotta buy long ones.",
"They do create other sizes, I got one for myself and my SO a while back to stay plugged in by the bed, since our only outlet was ~5ft away.\n\n[10ft long iphone 5/5s cable](_URL_0_)\n\n[10ft long micro usb cable](_URL_1_)"
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"http://www.amazon.com/K-ble-Ultra-Series-Charge-iPhone/dp/B00JWY5TRY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405523571&sr=8-1&keywords=10+ft+iphone+5+charger",
"http://www.amazon.com/Mediabridge-USB-2-0-High-Speed-Gold-Plated/dp/B00CTUIT20/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&... | ||
f1p338 | why the most watched youtube videos are mostly music videos? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f1p338/eli5_why_the_most_watched_youtube_videos_are/ | {
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"Because people watch a music video more than once.\n\nMost non-music videos are only watched once at most.\n\nHow often have you listened to your favorite song compared to how often you watched your favorite tv-show or movie?\n\nUnless it is something like a music video people simply will not watch it again and again and again.\n\nA video clip about a trick shot or something may be fun the first time but that is it.\n\nAdditionally popular songs have very broad appeal, while most you-tube channels are about a specific topic and have a much smaller target audience."
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20exdg | why can president obama make tweak provisions of the affordable care act (e.g. deadlines) once it has already passed through congress? | I have heard many people complain that President Obama has taken too many liberties with his implementation of the new health care law -- for example, extending mandate deadlines beyond what was allowed in the original bill. Is he allowed to do this because the executive branch has the discretion to implement laws in whatever way they see as most efficient? Or is he truly not allowed to do this (but the courts have just not done anything yet)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20exdg/eli5_why_can_president_obama_make_tweak/ | {
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"I guess I'll prepare for the downvotes.\n\nIt is true that the executive branch can have certain discretion in some things. However, regarding the deadlines, these are written into the ACA as \"HHS *shall* do such and such by such and such a date.\" This leaves no legal room for discretion. When the president decides to do it anyway, the issue is that the legal recourse that Congress has is iffy, as is the question of who might have standing to sue and therefore stop the violation of the law."
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57fseh | how do software companies with frequent updates (steam, etc) make sure that the os building their distributables don't have viruses or rootkits? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57fseh/eli5_how_do_software_companies_with_frequent/ | {
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"It is not unusual to not have a network connection to your build server, or at least restrict network access extremely. With modern VMs it is also possible to have one off build servers that you install from a trusted image specifically for building one version of the software before you scrap the machine. Having a secure build server is not only important to prevent viruses from spreading but also because the build server might have secret keys it uses to sign the software as part of the build process.",
" > It couldn't possibly be that hard for a production machine running Windows to get infected\n\nIt is not that hard for a production machine running Windows to NOT get infected.\n\nWash your hands, don't eat garbage you pick up from the ground, don't eat food of unknown origin, don't eat obviously spoiled food, and you'll never get food poisoning.\n\nBeing virus-free is basically the same. Keep your software updated, don't run everything you can run, don't run programs of unknown origin, don't run programs written by obviously bad and evil people.\n\nSource: administering other people's Windows computers for a living since 1995."
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2fog2b | the quality of most liquors is often affected by aging processes or the ingredients used. what makes certain brands of vodka "better"? | Couldn't find anything that really answered this question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fog2b/eli5_the_quality_of_most_liquors_is_often/ | {
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"The more times vodka has been distilled. Usually they don't distill more than five times, because after that the results are miniscule.",
"its a combination of both ingredients and process. Ciroc for example is made out of grapes, goose is made of wheat. Vodka can be made out of potatos, corn, etc. I dont believe that vodka is aged like whiskey. The flavor comes from whatever ingredients, and the smoothness comes from the refinement.",
"If you pour cheap vodka thru a Britta water filter a few times, it tastes like more expensive vodka.",
"Vodka is not aged. The biggest differences between vodkas are the type and quality of the ingredients (like the quality of the grain, potatoes, etc. that is used) and the number of times distilled (but after 3 it really doesn't matter much more)."
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6881ou | the hollywood writers strike that's currently happening and how it can affect movies. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6881ou/eli5_the_hollywood_writers_strike_thats_currently/ | {
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"There is not a writers strike happening currently. There is a strike that will happen if the negotiations do not go well this week.\n\nThe specifics are fairly complex but in a very boiled down form what would happen is that no new work would happen from the writers, and only some pre-existing project that meet specific qualifications will get continued work. \n\nThis means that no movie in the writing stage will be worked on, and almost no movie that is being shot can have rewrites or lines added. This means that they can only be shot how the script is written at the point the strike begins, with no changes. It basically means we will have movies that are slightly more poorly made, and then will have a gap in future years with not very many movies. \n\nThe bigger hit will be for TV. It means that shows in production face the same issues as I mentioned for the movies which is bad for most shows, but death to things like late night that write their stuff week or day of filming. "
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2c50sx | when i am in a building with many elevators and call for one, how does the system decide which one comes for me? | You know. Like 3 elevators. I am at floor 4. One is at floor 1, one at floor 7 and one at floor 6. How does they system decide which one comes? And does it have to do something with the difference in riding up or down? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c50sx/eli5_when_i_am_in_a_building_with_many_elevators/ | {
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"Your button push sends a request to a controller that you need an elevator. The controller uses a math rulez (algorithm) to find out which elevator is the best to satisfy your request. \n\nThe algorithms can be changed. Most are based on location in relation to you: you push the button and there is one elevator within a floor of your location and all the others are 3 floors or more away. The controller sends a signal based on that algorithm and sends the closest one to your location.\n\nThere are many different algorithms that work. The one in my office is awful! "
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c2mbfh | why is the pressure at the center of the earth higher than on the surface? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c2mbfh/eli5_why_is_the_pressure_at_the_center_of_the/ | {
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"Pressure is stuff pushing on you. If you stand on a chair vs hold a chair above your head there is a big different in amount of stuff pushing down on you (one chairs worth).\n\nAt the center of the earth there is one earths worth of stuff pushing down on you."
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2cgnq2 | why is initial weight loss when dieting always assumed to be "water weight"? | If your well hydrated and restricting calories, isn't your body burning stored fat? Why would you lose water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cgnq2/eli5_why_is_initial_weight_loss_when_dieting/ | {
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"First, most of your body is water. Lose 5lbs or gain it quickly? Probably water. Lose it over a few weeks with diet and exercise, probably both. \n\nOne pound of fat (454g) is equal to 4086~ calories. Let's say you just took out 500 calories from your diet. If you were gaining weight before, all you did is come closer to stabilizing your weight. Add exercise (burning approximately 300 calories) then you staying hitting that first pound of fat. It takes about 14 days to lose that one pound of fat. You probably lost two pounds though because of water loss. \nYou make it through your first month great! Probably lost a few pounds. Nothing really noticeable yet though. Scale has tipped but you don't see results. Three months of a good diet and exercise and you begin to really notice results. \n\n\"Diets\" are scams. Lose weight quick? Sure, if you want to gain it back once you come off the diet. The trick is to change the way you eat entirely. "
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2ktklz | utf8, utf16, utf32, unicode, ansi, ascii (and any others) | All I know is that they're something to do with how computers store text. What do each of them do? What are the differences? Where should each one be used? Are there any important ones I missed from the title? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ktklz/eli5_utf8_utf16_utf32_unicode_ansi_ascii_and_any/ | {
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"All of these are ways for computers to store text, yes.\n\nLet's start with ASCII. It's one of the oldest (1960's) and it's very English-centric. It encodes all of the letters, numbers, and symbols you can type on a standard English keyboard, and a few more, using 127 possible values:\n\n32 is a space\n48 is '0'\n65 is 'A'\n97 is 'a'\n\nAs computers started to support other languages, people use different encodings. Most European languages started with ASCII, but then added up to 128 additional mappings for other characters, like English letters with accent marks and additional punctuation not found in English.\n\nLanguages that weren't written with a Roman alphabet tended to use completely different encodings. There have been hundreds of encodings used around the world, over the years.\n\nUnicode was an effort to make a single encoding that could represent every character in every language on earth.\n\nThe standard is constantly evolving, but there are tens of thousands of mappings now, a single unicode value can represent a single character in English, Chinese, Greek, or even Klingon. There are tons of other symbols there including Webdings and Emoji.\n\nBecause there are so many unicode characters, it often takes more than 1 byte to represent a character (1 byte can store a value from 0 through 255). So different encodings were created to deal with existing software that expected \n\nUTF32 is the simplest. Basically, every unicode character is stored in 4 bytes. That's plenty of space.\n\nUTF16 is one of the worst. It was designed when people thought that every unicode character would fit in 2 bytes (up to 65 thousand characters), but that turned out not to be enough. Sadly, it's also what's used on Windows and in Java, and it's resulted in tons of bugs over the years.\n\nUTF8 is actually a pretty nice hack. UTF8 is a variable-length encoding that uses 1 byte to store ASCII characters, and 2 or more bytes to store other characters, such that none of those bytes correspond to ASCII. It's easy to encode and decode UTF8. The nicest thing is that all ASCII is valid UTF8, so it's easy to be compatible with old software that doesn't support Unicode.\n\nIf you open a UTF8 document in a program that doesn't support unicode, the ASCII characters still look right. The others don't, but at least if you leave them alone they won't get messed up.\n"
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3b6ex0 | why is playing white "better" than being black in the game of chess? whats the first mover advantage and what are those moves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b6ex0/eli5_why_is_playing_white_better_than_being_black/ | {
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"Playing white has the advantage because white moves first, and has the first opportunity to set what is called the 'tempo,' or the pace of the game. White moves, then black has to respond to it. However, white can easily lose tempo through bad play; therefore, among novices the advantage to white is less noticeable.\n\n[This article](_URL_0_) sets forth rather good, if slightly dense, explanations, and even advances the position that the theory of white advantage has a significant psychological component."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess"
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48ebx5 | could border states build a wall without the help of the federal government? | Are there laws preventing border states from just putting up the wall with Mexico or do they just refuse to pay for it themselves? Could other states like New Hampshire pay for it (given their governors opinion that immigration from Mexico is driving their Heroin Epidemic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48ebx5/eli5_could_border_states_build_a_wall_without_the/ | {
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"Actually, while not directly mentioned, a State funded border wall with Mexico would be very easily arguable to be a violation of the US Constitution, Article I section 10:\n\n > No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.\n\n > No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.\n\n > No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.\n\nBasically put, while they *could*, any kind of movement between nations (immigration) would be exclusively a federal matter and would be construed as a provocation."
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2xxz4c | why military members get transferred so much. | I have friends who are considered military brats, moving all over the place at odd intervals due to the father/mother being in the service. What is the point of this? Does Person A retire, they move B to A's position, C to B's base, etc? Is it a procedural part of promotions? How/Why does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xxz4c/eli5_why_military_members_get_transferred_so_much/ | {
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"I'm on the navy, and we have a sea shore rotation. We have a set number of years at sea, and a set number on shore. Also, there are some stations where you can only be stationed a short amount of time, and then get rotated elsewhere. \nIts also one of the perks of military service is getting to see all kinds of new places. Some rates (jobs) rotate more often than others, but mine for instance is more sea related, so I have longer sea rotations than shore. \nHope that helps. :-) "
]
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4ewbky | why does tilt-shift make everything look like toys/models? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ewbky/eli5_why_does_tiltshift_make_everything_look_like/ | {
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"I'm assuming you mean the \"tilt-shift effect\". Basically, because it mimics how we see miniature models. There are 3 things the photos have: \n \n1. The photo is taken from a higher vantage point (mimicking us looking down at a table or something). \n \n2. A shallow depth-of-field, mimicking our natural DOP when viewing something close up. \n \n3. Increased saturation, as miniature models usually have vibrant colors to make them look playful.",
"When you look at something close up, your eyes focus in the way that allows you to see them close up. That sounds obvious enough, but what this does is create a characteristic look to things that is almost something you don't think about, but it's definitely there. \n\nThe main thing with it is down to how the nearer parts of the view and the more distant parts are very blurry, and only a small amount of the middle of the view is sharp. \n\nIf you get down up close to something and look at it, this is how you see it, so when you see that effect on something else (even if it's a huge aerial view of a city, or looking into a football stadium) your brain tells you that you're up close to something very small. \n\nAs you've noticed, it's quite a powerful effect. "
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de4ntz | why don’t more products need to be tested and proven safe before hitting the shelves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/de4ntz/eli5_why_dont_more_products_need_to_be_tested_and/ | {
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"Like what? Because most are.",
"Most products in recognizably dangerous categories are required to be tested. Electronics, chemicals, food, and more all have various governing bodies in most countries or worldwide.\n\nWhat testing doesn’t prevent is misuse. A hammer could be tested to endure it holds up to reasonable nail driving and removing, but is not required to be tested as a tool misused driving screws or removing glass.\n\nDid you have specific examples of things needing testing?",
"testing is done by the manufacturer and results submitted to the regulating agency. the agency itself doesn't do the testing.\n\nthe bad vapes are not mass produced in a proper factory. they're bootleg carts that are made by some guy in a garage and started selling. \n\nroundup was tested, but the tests are for efficacy for killing weeds and causing immediate poisoning. a small contribution to additional risk for cancer is not something that you can easily test when you're developing the product. even if decades later it turns out to be true."
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5jun58 | how does voice control work? e.g. siri, cortana, alexa, etc. | Hi Reddit, this is my first post so I'm still trying to learn ins and outs!
I was recently helping my grandma set up her new Amazon Fire Stick and it had a feature where you can hold down a button and search using your voice-"Hey Alexa, open Netflix". Now this idea of voice assistance isn't new to me, but my always curious grandfather asked me "how does it know what you're saying and what to look for". While I usually have an answer for all his technology questions, this one stumped me.
If anyone could help shed some light on how voice search works, picks up different accents, or any other interesting facts, I know my grandfather and I would greatly appreciate the Info. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jun58/eli5_how_does_voice_control_work_eg_siri_cortana/ | {
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"sound is a wave. there is a mathematical equation that can take a wave and separate it into different frequency components. if you do this for speech, you see that the results are different for each word. so the computer measures the sound wave, makes a mathematical transformation, and compares it to a database of words.",
"When I first started programming in the early '90s natural language processing was just starting. At a business telephone conference in around 1996, the wow booth was the check in where you stated your name and a computer would match your name with your registration. It was pretty ground breaking at the time.\n\nMicrophones convert your voice into an electrical signal. Each sound is distinct. Over the last 20+ years, people have been able to refine how well a computer can match the distinct signal of a voice saying: \"Hey Alexa\" into the text, Hey Alexa. Everyone is building on everyone else's work. Computers are faster and more powerful, so they can examine the electrical signal with greater and greater detail, which means more and more accuracy.\n\nThe computer is trying to turn the sound signals into text. It then uses that text and performs a search over all the things it can do and finds the most likely thing that you want. Over the last 20+ years, searching for stuff based on text has gotten better and better too (thanks to Yahoo and Google and all the other search engines.)\n\nOnce the computer has a likely candidate for what command you were asking for, it then performs the command.\n\nIt would be tons less complex to give you a keyboard and have you type: Open Netflix, but the voice interface is more natural for humans, so that's why things are moving that way."
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2dv50j | how do old people get shorter? | Are they actually getting shorter or is it a matter of stance and pose? What causes it? Also, is it avoidable? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dv50j/eli5_how_do_old_people_get_shorter/ | {
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"* The disks between the vertebrae of the spine lose fluids and get compressed\n* Osteoporosis is very common in elderly people- tiny compression fractures will appear and the bones will become shorter\n* These fractures can lead to the spine curving a lot- this is called hyperkyphosis (i.e. hunchback)\n* The arches of the feet also flatten out as people age \n\n\n \nHaving a calcium and vitamin D rich diet can help keep bones stronger which will reduce the risk of one getting osteoporosis... exercising helps too."
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23t57m | if mutation is thought to be random and not subject to an organism's environment, what's the big deal about using anti-bacterial soap? | Edit: All you bitches are getting upvotes for science! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23t57m/eli5_if_mutation_is_thought_to_be_random_and_not/ | {
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"Because we're artificially killing all the ones who aren't immune to the anti-bacterials leaving only the ones who are immune. Eventually we'll have artificially selected bacteria to be immune to our counters and they'll kill us all.\n\nThat's the theory at least.",
"mutations are random, but selection is not. \n\nIf you put bacteria in an environment where there's an advantage to being immune to the anti-bacterial chemical, you don't increase the chances that a bacteria has a mutation that grants immunity. BUT, you do increase the chances that a bacteria that does have that mutation will survive and out-reproduce all the other bacteria (since you killed them with the anti-bacterial). \n\nThe trick, as I understand it, is that anti-bacterials are effective, but there are lots of relatively simple mutations that can provide resistance. As such, over use is just asking for trouble. ",
"Mutation is random, but the environment of the organism determines which are beneficial mutations and which are not. These beneficial mutations, which are selected by the environment, are more likely to survive.",
"Imagine that you have 100 bacteria in your body. Each one is slightly different from the next due to random mutations. You are now prescribed antibiotics. You take the full course of antibiotics and kill all 100 bacteria. However, these 100 bacteria have a different susceptibilities to the antibiotic. Some will die instantly to it, while other bacteria will be able to persist longer against it. Now if you don't take the full course of antibiotics, you have killed the bacteria that can't tolerate the antibiotic at all but will leave the ones that are more resistant to it. Now this bacteria has more space and \"food\" to grow since you killed the other bacteria and this \"resistant\" strain will grow and populate your body. The problem with using anti-bacterial soap and not taking the full course of antibiotics is that you are consistently selecting for the more resistant bacteria. If you want sources I can provide. Let me know if you have any questions",
"An individual specimen does not mutate from environment (other than from ionizing radiation ). A population and generations of the species will selectively adapt to the environment",
"Bacteria also have ways of transferring genes, so in addition, once the bacteria with resistance to hand soap are selected for, they can quickly pass these genes to other bacteria, so now you have more bacteria with that same resistance. "
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123vbd | what would happen if we halved the prices of all goods in the united states? | As a student interested in studying economics, I continue to be intrigued by this theoretical scenario. If we assume that we halved the prices of all goods in the United States (ie. a Big Mac would cost half of what it costs now), and that everyone living in the country followed this. What would happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/123vbd/what_would_happen_if_we_halved_the_prices_of_all/ | {
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"anything. The scenario is completely unrealistic so analyzing the outcome is impossible especially if you don't say why the price of goods is halved.\n\nIf it's by fiat, I assume that most companies would either sell half as much of the product. If that wasn't allowed they'd probably just close up shop as it wouldn't be profitable to produce goods anymore.",
"I imagine people would buy things like crazy causing a shortage in just about everything causing prices to soar back up to more then they where before the cut. ",
"if all went well. the dollar could just double in value. making all the rich propel richer and the poor poorer. it could also fix all the debt problems USA has. but most likely it would fuck up everything."
]
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al0jzd | why do radio call-ins still sound scratchy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/al0jzd/eli5_why_do_radio_callins_still_sound_scratchy/ | {
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"The phone system is quite a bit lower quality than radio, as such, the person calling in is going to sound a lot worse than the host on the radio.\n\nIn another analogy, the caller is in SD and the radio is in HD. When you show an SD picture on an HD screen, its still in SD. The caller is calling in from a worse \"picture\" and there's no way to change that.\n\n",
"Your first guess is definitely a thing. A lot of studios deliberately add noise and artifacts in order to make it more believable to the viewer or listener. If you have spent the effort to get a reporter on site it needs to sound like he is and not like he is at the other end of the studio. But even if this is not the case a normal consumer grade phone, even with a decent hands free microphone, will sound good on its own but crap when compared to a good studio microphone. And the addition of wind noise and other issue when doing outside broadcasting means that no matter what you do it will sound like crap.",
"Telephones filter out some of the ~~honey o'rageous~~ *audio ranges* for better compression. They also don't have the best microphones. the long-distance interviews that sound great have them talking over a telephone with the separate device recording the actual audio. the reporter might be sitting in the closet of the hotel with bunch of blankets around them to make it sound good. they send the audio into the studio and someone edits the conversation back together. Off at the beginning someone will make it clap and then they can use that to sync up the two sides later"
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6x6aj7 | how do animals like giraffes and pangolins keep such long tongues in their mouths? where does it go when their mouth is closed or they're chewing? | Inspired by this post in r/natureisfuckinglit
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x6aj7/eli5_how_do_animals_like_giraffes_and_pangolins/ | {
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"For Pangolins, the tongue actually retreats into the chest cavity.\n\nTo compare -- in humans, our tongue muscles are connected to the hyoid bone, which is a bone just between your chin and neck.\n\nIn Pagonlins, the tongue muscles actually attach to the thorax. (chest). They even have [a pair of spurs] (_URL_0_) inside of their abdomen to support these tongue muscles. [This] (_URL_2_) might not be the most pleasant picture (dissected pangolin fetus) but it shows rather vividly where that tongue is at. [This image] (_URL_3_) sadly isn't the most high definition, but you can see where all of that tongue goes.\n\nBut hey, it could be weirder. [Woodpeckers wrap their tongue around their brains] (_URL_1_)"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/6wz53j/pangolins_are_straight/"
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"http://pierce.wesleyancollege.edu/faculty/brhoades/WOC/mammals/mammalpics/M037%20tree%20pangolin%20xiphoid.JPG",
"https://images.earthtouchnews.com/media/1946381/woodpecker-tongue_2016_08_23.jpg",
"http://placentation.ucsd.edu/pangolinbg/Pangolin%20034.jpg",
"https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0c/0e/11/0c... | |
1xeipv | what is the point of a concealed weapon permit, specifically as opposed to an open carry? | When I think of the benefits of carrying a firearm, there are two points that stick out : an improved ability to defend myself, and the deterrent that a hip cannon ( aha that was a bit of fun, but really just any type of firearm ) represents to any would-be attackers.
Surely a concealed weapon is inferior in both these aspects? A concealed holster would be more difficult to draw a firearm from compared to a hip holster or other such holster. The Tueller Drill ( _URL_0_ ) determined that it takes a grown man 1.5 seconds to cover 21 feet. The difference in time it would take to make the weapon ready depending on your skill, while appearing insignificant, could be crucial.
As far as deterrent goes, if no one knows you're carrying, then... there is no deterrent compared to if you were not carrying. A confrontation that is avoided because an aggressor has been deterred by some big iron on the hip is infinitely more safe than a confrontation in which that same weapon, having been concealed ( and therefore not having deterred an aggressor ) has increased your ability to defend yourself.
No conflict = 0% risk of harm by non-existent assailant
Conflict = too hard to quantify. Too many different variables. However, definitely > 0%.
I'm not an American, so I have no idea about the various attitudes of state legislatures and the rationale behind their decisions.
ELI5: What is the point of concealing your tool of self defence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xeipv/eli5what_is_the_point_of_a_concealed_weapon/ | {
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" > As far as deterrent goes, if no one knows you're carrying, then... there is no deterrent compared to if you were not carrying.\n\nIt's like the old joke about the farmer who finally figures out a way to stop kids from stealing his watermelons. Thinking he's being clever, he puts out a sign that says \"one of these watermelons is poisoned. Eat at your own risk.\" For a few days, no one take a watermelon. Then, a week later he goes out to tend the field and sees that someone has tacked a handwritten note to his sign, \"now two of them are.\" \n\nIf there's concealed carry, it means that a criminal can never know if someone they are going to attack is carrying or not. So, like the farmer who now has to throw out all his watermelons to avoid selling the poisoned one, criminals who aren't prepared to risk encountering someone with a gun have to give up crime (or only engage in crime with a lot more planning and upfront cost). So it's actually safer for everyone, even the people who don't have guns, or who aren't carrying at some particular moment. (or such is the argument, anyway)",
"A few things spring to mind. \n\nFirst, a concealed weapon is far less likely to cause discomfort for the people around you. \n\nSecond, and perhaps more pertinent to defense, if you have a concealed weapon you have an element of choice and surprise on your side. Its the choice (whether or not to make it known that you have a firearm) that can be very beneficial in circumstances that arn't as cut and dry as the average fantasy defense scenario. \n\nYou said deterrent, but that's not really the case with weapons. What it would do is paint a huge red target on you if the assailants had weapons. "
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zldxv | - for my counterparts across the sea...why does the royal family (men) wear kilts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zldxv/eli5_for_my_counterparts_across_the_seawhy_does/ | {
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"They don't all that often do they? If they did, it's because they are also the royal family of Scotland, not just of England (following the Union of the Crowns in 1603), which I would guess confers the right to wear a kilt.\n\nA kilt is the national dress of Scotland, btw.",
"Scotland is a part of the United Kingdom and Prince Phillip (the Queens husband) Is the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles (the next King) is Duke of Rothesay both of which are Duchies in Scotland."
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6jzcer | what are the basic differences (hardware and software) between an apple phone and an android phone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jzcer/eli5_what_are_the_basic_differences_hardware_and/ | {
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"Apple phones or iPhones are completly made by Apple. So they make the hardware and the software. They try to fit theire software best possible way to the hardware. And the software will only work on this specific hardware. If you want to install an app, you need to go over the iStore from apple. Your possibilites to customize your phone are limited. \n\nAndroid started as an operation system for smartphones. So the devs just give a guideline which hardware you should use. But if you make your own drivers, apps and so on, you can extend it as you want. This gives the opportunity to customize the hardware of the phone as you want. But you have to live with drawbacks in the software. (cause there are millions of different devices and devs cant test them all. soo bugs...) There are multiple different App-Stores and you can install your apps manually (if you know how). \n\nGenerally said: Android phones are more customizable and can be produced in all different kinds imagible. \nApple Phones are generally more expensive but (mostly) just work. For people who dont like to look deeper into there phone it's in my opinion the better option. \n\nAll in all both have good and bad points.\n"
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af3a6b | how exactly are baby venomous snakes more deadly than adults? | I've always heard that it's because they can't control their venom, but that doesn't exactly seem logical to me. Any nope rope-ologists in the science side of Reddit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af3a6b/eli5_how_exactly_are_baby_venomous_snakes_more/ | {
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"The venom differs from adult snakes in some species and we dont fully understand the chemistry behind the development and change of venom in the development of snakes. Evolutionarily baby snakes having deadlier venom makes a lot of sense.",
"If I remember correctly, I heard that baby snakes were more dangerous because they don't hold back any venom. An adult will give a portion based on how big the animal that it's striking, but the baby has no experience and just gives it all. ",
"I’ve heard that it isn’t that the venom itself is any more poisonous but rather that immature snakes have smaller fangs and less control over their poison glands. This means they tend to inject more poison into their victims then older snakes. \n\n1) because they will keep triggering the glands\n2) less space in the fangs means more of each injections goes into the victim. ",
"It's a myth. There is zero evidence showing baby snakes are more dangerous than older snakes. It's just old wives tales. "
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4pqxmp | if the first homo sapiens appeared in africa how did they populate lands far across the oceans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pqxmp/eli5_if_the_first_homo_sapiens_appeared_in_africa/ | {
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"They walked there over land bridges when sea levels were lower during ice ages, or they sailed there. ",
"Early sapiens were hunter/gatherers for thousands of years. They wandered & were nomadic searching food. Stationary communal living was abnormal up until the agrarian revolution. ",
"Early homo sapiens fossils date back to about 200,000 years ago in East Africa. The first migrations of people moving out of Africa date to about 60,000-100,000 years ago. Thats 100,000 years of humans living in Africa as hunter-gatherers before they moved into the middle east. Once we began our migrations we quickly spread into Europe, India, S.E. Asia, and China (~50,000-60,000 years ago). By the time humans arrived in S.E. Asia there was a good chance that they were able to build rudimentary boats that enabled them to island hop down south reaching as far as Australia. The distances between islands was likely less, but that doesn't mean that it was an easy journey. The journey into northern Asia (e.g. Russia/Siberia) took longer, and the first humans crossing the [Bering Straight](_URL_0_) into Alaska was IIRC ~20,000 years ago. Again, it didn't take long for these early nomads to spread throughout North, Central, and South America. There is also some suggestion that perhaps later S.E. Asians with better boat technology made it as far as South America, but of the living indigenous Americans, most can trace their genetic ancestry to Northern Asia (North-eastern Siberia). Throughout these periods there would have been many migrations or waves of people. \n\n**ELI5**: They walked...a lot. Sometimes they might have been in boats. ",
"At some point, most lands were connected via land.\n\nThe Bering Strait used to be a land bridge connecting what is now Eastern Russia to present-day Alaska. This is how Native Americans crossed.\n\nThere are several theories as to how they got throughout the South Pacific. The most common ones being that they traveled from island to island on rafts and boats when water levels were low."
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1t5k8x | what is the difference between shaving cream for sensitive skin and regular shaving cream? | It seems to be just as effective.
Also what is sensitive skin? I noticed that I am getting a much better shave with the sensitive skin shaving cream. So I was thinking that I might have sensitive skin. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t5k8x/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_shaving_cream/ | {
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"Most likely nothing. I say this because I looked at Dove Men + care vs regular Dove and they're both 75% moisturizer. Just like regular soap and antibacterial only kill 75% of germs."
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6mavf7 | how do you calculate how far lightning strikes from your location? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mavf7/eli5_how_do_you_calculate_how_far_lightning/ | {
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"Approximate the speed of light as infinite.\n\nStart counting seconds from the time you see the flash.\n\nStop counting when you hear the thunder.\n\nMultiply by the speed of sound in air (~1100 feet per second) to get feet away.\n\nDivide by 5000 to get number of miles away.\n\nWhip out a calculator if you want more exact numbers."
]
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1m1gox | why the north was fighting against slavery in the civil war, yet the 13th amendment was barely passed by this same government? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m1gox/eli5_why_the_north_was_fighting_against_slavery/ | {
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"Some people were concerned that the Thirteenth Amendment was the first step of a program to give black people equal rights, and that idea was very unpopular at the time. ",
"The north didn't go to war to end slavery. They went to war in order to preserve the union—to bring the southern states back under the USA.\n\nThe south, however, did secede because of slavery. For a present day analogy, think of all those people who insist that Obama wasn't born in the USA, or that he is a \"secret Muslim.\" They are wrong, but they don't care, they just really hate the guy more than they care about truth.\n\nA similar thing happened with Abraham Lincoln, but in a larger scale. He wasn't planning to end slavery when he got elected, but the southern states freaked out that Lincoln was going to take their slaves away anyway.",
"My Southern heritage will show in this post.\n\nIt was not technically a Civil War. A Civil War is when two different forces within a country are fighting to control a country. In our war, the Confederacy was not interested in controlling the USA, they wanted to secede and form their own separate country. Their argument was that since each state joined the country by choice, they also could leave by choice.\n\nThe reason this is important is the war was over slavery, but that's kinda incidental. Whenever a country is justifying war, they usually bring up issues like God and justice, etc to get people to rally behind it. The war was about slavery because the South's economy was built off slaves. The threat of Lincoln as president and the abolition of slavery scared the shit out of the South. And they were right to be scared because it took decades for the Southern economy to recover from the aftermath. This in no way justifies slavery, but it does explain why the South was so dedicated to keeping slaves. All the cries of \"states rights\" and \"God's will\" were means of rallying the people to get behind secession. Make no mistake about it, the profitability of slaves was the reason why the South seceded, but the important word is \"profitability.\"\n\nThis brings us to the North's involvement. The war started when the North sent a ship to Fort Sumter after the South seceded. This was a smart move by Lincoln because if the fort accepted the ship, it would make their declaration of succession impotent. Instead, the fort fired on the Northern ship. This allowed Lincoln to declare that the South had fired upon a US ship and allowed him to get support for the war since the South fired first. This is important because a lot of the population in the North felt like letting the South secede was a-okay.\n\nAll that was background to answer the question you asked. A lot of the North was against slavery and were morally outraged by it, but The North was not fighting against slavery per se. They were fighting because they were refusing to let the South break away from the rest of the country. A lot of Northerners were okay with slavery, and a lot of them were against slavery, but not for equal rights. During that time, a lot of leading scientific minds believed that black people were a lesser race to white people. It sounds like splitting hairs since today is we are more enlightened that 150 years ago, but at the time there was a huge leap from thinking that people shouldn't be enslaved to believing that they were of equal stature and value.",
"The North was never fighting a \"war against slavery\". Lincoln's only goal was to assure the Union stayed together. On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune that included the following passage: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”\n\nThe Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the rebelling states. Why only there? Because the Northern states had plenty of slaves as well.\n\nWhen it came to voting on the 13th amendment it was initially defeated by democrats who argued states rights, but after some nifty wrangling by Lincoln, who may or may not have instructed people to get votes any way possible, it was eventually passed. Lincoln was afraid that hid proclamation wouldn't hold up and really needed the amendment to pass. Remember the 13th amendment abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, it has nothing to do with the color of your skin. Many people owned slaves...not just the South.",
"I have been reading about the war for more than 30 years, teaching about it for almost 20 at the college level. Let me assure you the war was about slavery. Most of the people in the North did NOT want to abolish the institution as it existed in those states that currently had it. Most of the leadership in the South wanted not only to preserve it inside those states but to expand it. Thanks to Taney's decision and the collapse of the various compromises by the election of 1860 the conflict had become irrepressible.",
"I was under the impression that one of he main reasons Lincoln wanted to end slavery during the war was to prevent France or GB from siding with the South. For what it's worth, but France and GB wanted the U.S. to break up rather than face an rising emerging economic and political power. Furthermore, Europe had a shortage of grain during this time period and was even more heavily reliant on obtaining wheat and other products. The South was obviously the largest producer of these farm goods. One of the core tenets of the Lincoln ending slavery was if they were to do so then it'd like terrible that France and GB would support the South given that they support slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation had locked the Confederates in an anachronism which could not survive in the modern world.\n\nBasically, that is a summation of [this article on the American Civil War & Europe](_URL_0_)\n\n"
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4wyowj | how games like no man's sky can actually be so large that even the developers don't know how big it is? | I heard that the game had thousands of plants all of which are unique in their own way and there are so many of them that you can't ever visit them all. How is this possible? How can the game fit on a disk? If you don't code a portion of the game then how can it exist? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wyowj/eli5_how_games_like_no_mans_sky_can_actually_be/ | {
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"Imagine if I gave you a big handful of **dice**. I can know for sure how many dice you have, and how many sides they have, and I can even tell you how many different numbers you can possibly roll, but i'll never know what number you will roll next.\n\nThey have set up a system that builds a planet from a handful of random numbers (say, a dice for color of the sky, a dice for the kind of rocks, a dice for how many kinds of animals and how big they are), and we'll never know what kinds of weird combinations there will be until your number comes up and the system builds THAT planet.",
"They used what's called \"procedual generation\" for the worlds.\n\nThis, more or less, means that instead of the developers directly creating the worlds, they created a procedure that a computer uses to create a bunch of different worlds with different properties. Then they ran the procedure and just dumped all the results into the game without looking at the details like average planet size, how often certain creature types were created that were identical (or close enough), ect.\n\nTherefore, they can look at the broad strokes and know \"That's really fucking big\" without knowing exactly how big it is."
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3mx2gq | why are we so careful to not spread earth microbes in space? would it be so bad to plant life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mx2gq/eli5_why_are_we_so_careful_to_not_spread_earth/ | {
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"Yes. We want to know what's already there and how it got there. Can't do that if it gets contaminated with Earth microbes.",
"To add to what rodariskol said, one of the most fascinating things about alien life is that, well, literally every single thing on the entire planet is related. If you go back 4 billion years, we're all descended from the same basic single celled life forms.\n\nBut that's not true of life on another planet. Any life, even microbial life, has evolved completely, absolutely 100% independently of life on earth. There is nothing on earth that shares this property and for that reason alone, we need to be so careful of alien life because if we contaminate it, we ruin that chance to see evolution from an outside perspective.",
"It would be pretty embarrassing to announce you've just discovered life on mars when it's really just microbes accidentally left because some dingus opened up a box of ultracleaned drillbits on earth and dirtied them up them before they were used on mars by some previous roverbot.",
"I'm sorry, but if after millions of years of adapting to martian conditions our microbes still manage to accidentally outcompete them, then that's on them."
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30gvpd | i have a few questions regarding incest. not finding simple answers... | So I have been reading about incest relationships since yesterday out of pure curiosity. If my opinion matters at all, I think there are exceptions in which you could fall in love with someone related to you. That being said, I think the majority of incest is probably abuse or a result of some sort of perversion. The questions I am asking are definitely going to determine where exactly I stand on the subject. Rather than just the general view I have right now.
I have done research about this on the internet. I either get porno or some extreme scientific wording that I don't understand, And then there is just strong opinions(which may play a part but I am looking for: as factual as I can get). Plus I am sure this may satisfy a few people who are also simply curious. Win-win.
Here's my questions:
Hypothetically, let's say a daughter falls in love with her biological father after meeting him for the first time as an adult. They are so in love and have what seems to be a completely healthy relationship. In the area they live in, incest is legal and so is marriage. They decide to get married.
They decide they would like to have their own children.
1. What are the risks of the baby having any deformities? Is it: MOST LIKELY that something will go wrong, 50/50, or there is almost no risk?
2. What are the major deformities that usually occur?
3. I am confused as to WHY there is even a chance of deformities? In my mind I would think that there would be no chance of deformities because the genes would essentially be the same. Meaning that their genes are fine in the first place... So why would that even pose a possible problem?
4. Does it matter how close you are to relation? Example, would there be a greater chance of deformity if she has the child with her biological father, rather than a half brother or even distant cousin? Or If you are in ANY way blood related, there is the same risk of deformity...?
Hypothetically, let's say they have a son that is a perfectly healthy baby with no physical or mental disabilities...
5. When the son grows up and marries a women who is in NO way related to him, does he have to worry about his children having any deformities or disabilities? What are the chances?
I think that is pretty much all my curious questions, I'd really REALLY appreciate some insight from somebody who knows a little about this. These questions have been nagging my brain because it effects how I feel about the relationships I've been reading about, and I JUST DON'T KNOW!
I find the stories I have read to be fascinating and would like to move forward with a bit of knowledge. No, I'm not a freak getting off to this stuff, because I know there is someone out there who is gonna go there...
One more thing:
I cannot for the life of me figure out what first, second, and third cousin means in relation. I would love someone to explain this like I am 5! (yes, I've searched about this too and Wiki really fucked my brain to slosh.) So to simplify questions:
1. What is a first cousin?
2. What is a second cousin?
3. What is a second cousin, TWICE REMOVED?
Thank you much Redditeeors =) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30gvpd/eli5_i_have_a_few_questions_regarding_incest_not/ | {
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" > I am confused as to WHY there is even a chance of deformities?\n\nEvery person carries a lot of recessive mutations (the mutations which would manifest themselves only if present in both alleles).\n\nPeople that are unrelated usually carry completely different sets of recessive mutations, so if both parents are healthy, there is a very low probability of getting a child with deformities.\n\nYou and your close relatives share a lot of recessive mutations, so breeding with them will bring much bigger chance for these mutations to manifest themselves in your children.\n\n > Does it matter how close you are to relation?\n\nYes. The farther the relation is, the less common genes (and thus recessive mutations) you share.\n\n > When the son grows up and marries a women who is in NO way related to him, does he have to worry about his children having any deformities or disabilities?\n\nNo.",
"Vice is nice, but incest is best. Except when you have children. It is a very involved genetic puzzle of gene research that the medical field has only partial solved. Royal families have a history of very low IQ or other body malfunctions with some offspring. Deformities is not the only result of relative offspring. You have blood disorders or other organ disorders that occur. Study of genetics will provide you with specifics.\n",
"Egyptian pharaohs and Hawaiian kings would marry their siblings. They had to marry someone of equal royal rank. These societies had examiners who would examine a born infant for defects. A defective infant would be abandoned.\n[Oedipus](_URL_0_) was abandoned on a mountain. The abandonment of an infant was common enough to not be against the law. But incest was. So Jocasta hung herself. Oedipus blinded himself.\n\nWith sufficient inbreeding the strain becomes homozygous. The genes of both parents are the same. Recessive genes are expressed. In animals rigorous selection of the breeding population can produce a healthy inbred population. But crossing two inbred lines will result in [hybrid vigor](_URL_1_)",
"Imagine that your genes are playing cards. Everyone has two sets of them, running Ace to King. Let's say that clubs represents a \"bad\" gene, that can cause a defect, but it's a recessive gene. What that means is that if you have two copies of the three of clubs (for example), then you have the birth defect. But if you have a single three of clubs, and a three of diamonds, then you don't get the defect - you're what we call a \"carrier\" of the defective gene.\n\nWe are all carriers of defective genes. But because they're recessive genes, we don't show any signs of the defect.\n\nYour father and your mother, when they conceived you, dealt out your genes. For each value, your father randomly picked one of his cards, and your mother randomly picked one of hers. So if your dad was a carrier of the three of clubs, there's a chance that you'll get that defective gene from him. And if your mum was a carrier too, then there's a chance you'd get a copy from her as well. And so if both your parents had copies of the three of clubs, there's a (1 in 4) chance that you'll get two copies, which means you'll get the defect.\n\nIt's pretty rare for two people to be carriers of the same genetic defect and hence wind up with a child who has that defect. But if two people are related, it becomes much more likely. After all, any defective genes that you have must have come from one of your parents (give or take a random mutation). So if you've got a three of clubs, you know either your mother or your father gave it to you. And if you have brothers and sisters, each of them must have a decent chance of having a three of clubs too.\n\nSo if parents and children, or brothers and sisters, conceive a child together, they're already *much* more likely to have a couple of bad genes in common, which means that it's much more likely that the child will wind up with the birth defect; as compared to two random strangers doing the same thing."
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6u0nja | how did the gesture of showing our palm become a salute? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u0nja/eli5how_did_the_gesture_of_showing_our_palm/ | {
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"IIRC it goes back to medieval times where a friendly knight would raise his face cover to reveal his identity. This action would result in his palm facing forward. I've also heard that this is where military salutes also originated "
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3417g6 | why do we not include commas in years [ex. 2015] but we include them in nearly every other numerical situation [ex 2,015]? | Seriously, is there a reason? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3417g6/eli5_why_do_we_not_include_commas_in_years_ex/ | {
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"It's not needed because all years that we're interested in have four digits, or occasionally three. Digit grouping helps to quickly identify numbers with more digits, such as telling the difference between 1,000,000 and 100,000. If the only options are three or four digits, your brain is already good at telling the difference without extra help."
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61f91q | why are we unable to get out of bed and are really tired when we have to be up for work/school but when we have an opportunity to sleep in, we wake up at a normal time and seem to have no trouble getting up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61f91q/eli5_why_are_we_unable_to_get_out_of_bed_and_are/ | {
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"Dude I wish I woke up at the same time on weekends. I'm not physically capable of waking up before 12 if I don't have to be up before then",
"I believe it has to do with the REM cycle. There are points of natural lighter and heavier sleep and an alarm can interrupt a heavier point in the cycle. With no alarm we wake at the more natural lightest point in the cycle nearest our habitual wake up time, feeling more rested. \n\nI do not have one but there are sleep tracking gadgets that are supposed to flex your alarm time to better match your REM cycle. ",
"It might be that the idea of getting up to face a full day of stuff you don't want to do is a lot harder than just getting up to eat cereal and watch cartoons",
"I use an app called sleep cycle and it's helped me quite a lot. It tracks your activity with the accelerometer (and maybe microphone as well?) inside your phone. It wakes you up in a 30 minute window when you're 'least asleep'. Nothing can replace a proper night's sleep with a sensible bed time, though. Get off of reddit ;) ",
"Your brain likes consistency, and that includes consistent sleep time. Wild variations in sleep between weekdays and weekends is actually the problem behaviour. Congratulations, you're normal!\n\nPeople are blaming biology for ease of getting out of bed, but there is a much more simply answer: if you don't really want to be at work or school, you aren't going to be super enthusiastic about getting out of bed on time. If you're looking forward to your weekend, you're going to feel better about waking up."
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39xe23 | how does navigator geolocation works ? | My computer, unlike my phone, isn't packed with a GPS, so how does it knows where I am ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39xe23/eli5_how_does_navigator_geolocation_works/ | {
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"Usually, it makes a list of all the wifi networks it can see, and sends the list to an online database (often Google's, but there are others). That knows where each network is, so it can work out where you must be.\n\nSo how does that database know where each network is? Google got their initial data from the Street View cars, which made a note of all the networks they passed while taking photos. After that, devices which do have GPS can report which networks they see and the location they got from GPS."
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34dzj6 | does our universe have a shape or a top and a bottom? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34dzj6/eli5_does_our_universe_have_a_shape_or_a_top_and/ | {
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"It depends on who you ask and what they believe. Nobody knows for sure but that won't stop people from giving you a definitive answer. "
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3ozhea | why is bacon sold in strips and not big ol' delicious hunks o' bacon steaks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ozhea/eli5_why_is_bacon_sold_in_strips_and_not_big_ol/ | {
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"You can certainly purchase bacon in slabs. But most bacon in grocery stores is sold in strips for the exact same reason that most bread is sold sliced: because that's the way most customers want it.",
"You wake up, you crave some bacon, then you realize you need to cut it yourself into thin strips for it to cook to that tasty crunchy perfection. You dont have a deli slicer so what now? Your 8 minute breakfast prep just turned into 15 minutes. F** that. ",
"If you are ever in the Atlanta area, go to Pataks. You can get it sliced as thick as you want it. Or you can buy it in slabs. Great stuff!",
"Isnt a thick peice of bacon steak just called gamon? Maybe not in us but uk im sure it is :0",
"You actually can get bacon as a big ol' delicious hunk, it just goes under a different name: pork belly. It's the same cut, just uncured & not cut into strips, at least according to the information I can find on it. [This](_URL_0_) seems to have a decent writeup on it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, though.",
"Isn't that what pork belly is? A thicker cut of bacon, minus being cured/seasoned or whatever?",
"The closest alternative for the thing you want would be pork belly. Or a pork loin. Pork belly is more fatty, and will give you more of that \"Bacon taste.\" Where pork loin is more lean (Still incredibly fatty as it has a thick layer of fat on the top, when I made it, it tasted a lot like bacon as well). I followed this recipe for the loin _URL_0_\n\nAnd I personally never made pork belly, so I don't have a recipe, but one of my friends made it once, and it basically just tastes like one big slab of soft bacon. It was amazing.",
"You can get there with pork bellies. Or if you're cheap, buy the bags of bacon scraps/ends. Mileage may vary, but I've gotten some really nice, fat hunks of bacon. Soooooo good. Skinny bacon is a waste of everyone's time.",
"Isn't gammon basically like a joint/steak/chop of bacon?",
"Giant slabs of bacon is called Pork Belly. Should be available at nearly every butcher shop or grocery store. \n\nYou just gotta finish it to become bacon. It hasn't been smoked or preserved in any way as pork belly. ",
"The grocery store will likely not sell a slab of bacon like you're looking for; you'll need to go to a real butcher or another country (in many European countries there are cuts of meat we never have in the US stores). As others have said the stores sell strips because that's what people buy. But one thing I learned after purchasing a slab of bacon while traveling in Germany was that the bacon meat was much tougher than it seems when cooked in strips. You could barely chew if you took a normal mouthful bite, so that might also have something to do with *why* people prefer thin strips.",
"Just go to a butcher shop and ask for a pork belly. Smoke it, grill it, do whatever you want with it. ;)",
"I think that the question is why is precut/sliced \"bacon\" sold by oscar mayer and company.\n\nI have no clue, i suspect its for the \"dumbest common denomitor\" that just deep fries it or eats it as it comes, \n\nThat paper thing crap when you try to crisp it just curls or up waves and its very hard to really get it nice and scripy, you would need something 3 times as thick to make proper crispy bacon. ",
"When you go to the grocery store look for bacon ends and pieces. It's just big chunks of bacon or failed slices. And dirt cheap compared to sliced bacon prices. I pay 2.99 for 2 pounds in NC."
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fouodp | what happens when a substance is dissolved into a liquid eg. sugar ? | So when I mix sugar into coffee, what exactly happens to the sugar ? How does it "dissolve " ? Does it just shrink? Does it get absorbed?
Thanks for the science answer(s) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fouodp/eli5_what_happens_when_a_substance_is_dissolved/ | {
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"There are two kinds of what one might colloquially call \"dissolving\" something in water.\n\nThe first is a \"true\" solution the other we call emulsion. The big difference is whether the substance we try to dissolve splits into polar (slightly magnetic) particles when we mix it.Water itself is polar, and it sticks to other polar particles, basically making them a part of the _URL_0_ emulsion happens when you have non polar particles but split them apart well enough within the water, so they don't form big blobs. Stuff like soap acts as a so called \"emulsifier\" which takes non polar particles but sticks a magnet on them, so water can hold on to them better. \n\n\nEdit: the actual process of dissolving, is splitting the big crystals of sugar into many many small particles, which the water can hold onto. If something is very soluble, this happens just by water bouncing against it, so you don't even have to stir (though stirring speeds the process up)."
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1ptqnw | rendering | What is the so-called process 'rendering'? What is the program doing when I ask it to render my video? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ptqnw/eli5_rendering/ | {
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"ELI5 version: when you're working with computer graphics, they are \"dumbed down\" so that you can move things around and edit them without needing a computer farm to do it. So in some situations, they're working with wire mesh models or with estimated lighting physics until they're happy with the scene. At this point it takes the computer some extra time and power to \"render\" the scene with accurate lighting, colors, physics, etc. "
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4i1d1n | what are ocean currents? how do they work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i1d1n/eli5what_are_ocean_currents_how_do_they_work/ | {
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"I am not an oceanologist, but I'll do by best.\n\nThe main factors as far as I know are temperature (like in air currents) and salinity.\n\nWater in the northern areas cools and becomes more dense, causing it to sink. This sinking action causes warm water from the equator to displace it. The cold water is slowly pushed back to the ewuator, where it warms and rises again.\n\nWater also loses the ability to hold salt as it cools - and water with salt in it is more dense. How this effects the cycle, I'm not sure, but it is a factor.\n\nThe point is there are different mechanisms that cause the density of water to change subtley, and even a subtle change has a profound effect when you're dealing with millions of tons of water."
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2xsmp4 | why do so many people run unopposed for state legislatures? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xsmp4/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_run_unopposed_for/ | {
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"My state legislator ran unopposed in the general election (he did have a primary challenger, though).\n\nThe reason that it happened was because he's well financed in a district that very heavily leans towards his party. Few people are going to waste money running against him.",
" > If I just decided to run, would I be elected if I ran unopposed?\n\nOf course. That's what unopposed means.\n\nBut you won't be able to just pick a seat and win. The people who are running unopposed are unopposed largely because no one is willing to run against them because it's seen as a waste of time and money when a district so heavily leans to one side.",
"Yes, if you ran unopposed you would win by default. (Getting super technical here, you would need at least one actual vote by your name, but the chances of you not getting any votes are zero. Most voters still check a box for every race if there's nobody else running in any given one, and also, many people vote straight party tickets, which will automatically give you their vote if you're a member of that party.)\n\nWhy are so many seats unopposed? Well, at the state level, every individual Legislative seat only covers say, part of a single county or maybe a little more. Areas of this small a size tend to be overwhelmingly occupied by voters of one party or the other. So if, say, District 3 pretty much always votes 85% Republican, there's probably not much of a reason for any Democrat to even waste his/her time and money trying to run for that seat, because it's just not going to happen. \n\nThe opposition rate is even worse for other state offices and local races. Nobody's going to spend even $500 registering and printing up campaign materials for a county school board race if they don't think they have at least some amount of hope of winning. "
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25we73 | why can the la times "litter" all the driveways on my street? | Why can the LA Times throw *unsolicited* papers on every driveway on my street and it not be considered littering? I'm not talking about newspapers delivered to subscribers. These are just bundled up advertisements. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25we73/eli5_why_can_the_la_times_litter_all_the/ | {
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"LA Times is a propaganda machine. They litter the streets with bias opinions just like war time fliers dropped from arial bombers in Vietnam, or Iraq. \n\nThey're only still in business because of the Government. Hence, they are owned by the Government.\n\n",
"My ex used to deliver a paper here in MO, USA that was non subscription. Everyone got one whether they wanted it or not. It had a purchase price on it and therefore supposedly had value so was not considered littering."
]
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[],
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3b4dcl | why do i get a metallic taste in my mouth after i cut my fingers? | I'm a flooring mechanic and every time I cut or smash my finger, I get a metallic like taste in my mouth. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b4dcl/eli5_why_do_i_get_a_metallic_taste_in_my_mouth/ | {
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"text": [
"Unless you cut your finger on something strongly radioactive, in which case you have bigger problems, I'd say you have a mild case of synesthesia. Use it to casually charm girls at parties. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1ormg3 | if a pipe was pushed through the earth from one end to the other and i jumped in it, would i stop mid-way and...float? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ormg3/if_a_pipe_was_pushed_through_the_earth_from_one/ | {
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"No! As you fell towards the center of the earth, you would be accelerating. You'd reach the center at a very high speed, and then decelerate until you reached the other end of the tube, where you would pop out at the same speed that you first entered with. The way the math works out, this journey would take about ~~90~~ 45 minutes. These are called \"gravity trains\" and [here's](_URL_0_) a great link with some more info!\n\nA really important note: This does not take air resistance into account, which would greatly decrease your speed. In reality, if you just hopped into this pipe all by your lonesome, you'd oscillate around the center of the earth, so in that regards your assumption is correct.\n\nEdit: Had the wrong time. ~45 minutes, not 90",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere is a video from Vsauce / MinutePhysics that talk about it.",
"No. You'd yoyo about the centre before eventually coming to rest after a LONG time.",
"In the [Total Recall remake](_URL_0_), instead of traveling to Mars, they travel to Australia to work. They get there using an elevator through the earth called The Fall. When they get to the middle of the earth, they are weightless for a bit as they change directions -- from traveling down to coming up the other side. The only cool thing about the movie.",
"You would quickly become spattered about within it as your slipstream drew you firmly against the side of the pipe and it \"erased\" your flesh at 100mph. Air drag would slow you down LONG before you got to the actual \"center\" of the earth. Gravity would effectively be reduced to the point where your terminal velocity would be less than enough for you to pass through the center point. Results may vary depending on the location of the moon and sun at time of entry into the system. The third factor is air pressure near the center. While there's effectively no gravity AT the center of the orbital system and in precise this circumstance there will be gravity pulling off to one side or another, the earth's main gravity will still be pulling air in from both sides and compressing it in the middle. You would likely be crushed nearly the same as if diving too fast.\n\ntl;dr? Wind drag = torn up badly and motionless half-way. Air pressure = crushed dead. ",
"In case none of whats around already explains things for you and if you need a visual representation [this video](_URL_0_) should help.",
"This is actually a very common physics problem that comes up on tests. It ends up that the solution is more or less identical to the motion of a spring or pendulum, the so-called Harmonic Oscillator problem. If you began at the center of the Earth then you would float without moving, just like if you had a pendulum or spring resting at its point of stability. If you stretch the spring, move the pendulum ball, or shift your location from the center of the Earth and let go, then you would begin to oscillate about that center position of stability. This motion would go on forever in the absence of friction and can be modeled with a simple cosine waveform. If you include friction then this becomes a Damped Harmonic Oscillator problem. You effectively get a decaying exponential multiplied onto the Oscillating Cosine form that gradually kills off all motion and leaves you sitting at the center of stability.",
"So did you watch Total Recall earlier today???",
"I think you'd be crushed and cooked before your compressed ashes got a chance to float.",
"So apparently the conclusion is that you would pass the middle with enough momentum to travel up 6400km or 3800miles. Even the video link of some guy who seems to know his shit agrees with this hypothesis. Well respectfully I think its fucking retarded, we don't pick up infinite speed as we fall, we would eventually reach terminal velocity, and the moment we cross the middle gravity starts to slow us down immediately. So just how fast do you suppose our body would have to be traveling to out fight gravity for 3800miles!?!?! There wouldnt be enough power to make it through fully, you would make it so far then fall the other way, make it so far, then fall the other way till you eventually got stuck in the middle. If your arguing about gravity train this or some stupid fucking notion that rationalizes popping out the other side, try to comprehend the energy and speed you would need to travel 3800miles against gravity... do you really think momentum is going to carry you 3800miles?!?!",
"Thanks for asking this OP, this is a crazy question and something I never thought to ask!",
"I don't know if this will be seen by any smart people, but let's amend the post to what I think was meant: if a person was *placed* at the center of the earth, in this tube, would they .... float?",
"Yes, you would stop half-way, and here is why. Skydivers generally reach what is called Terminal Velocity, TV for short. For a spread eagle position TV is about 120 miles per hour. For a head/foot first dive position it is about 180 MPH. This gives a trip time of 50-75 hours, not the 45 minute estimate given below (66.666 hrs if you use an Earth diameter of 8000 miles and a TV of 120 mph.). Now because TV is such a low value you won't get very far past the center of the Earth and reach a self-damping oscillation of the center of the Earth. On the upside, you would be weightless.",
"Simple harmonic motion will happen neglecting air friction.",
"came for answer. got none.",
"You would be harassed by the TSA first.",
"This thread is sort of blowing my mind. Definitely not being explained like I'm five. ",
"I always thought this could be used to generate electricity using a pipe that had coils of wire round it and a large spherical magnet dropped into it, even more effective on the moon",
"You would pass the midpoint, reach some of the way to the other side, constantly slowing down due to air resistance, and eventually, given enough oscillations, yes, float in the middle.\n\n(Assuming that the pipe didn't melt and could be made a safe temperature and similar logistical issues are handled.)"
]
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],
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN-FfJKgis8"
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[],
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],
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4d490y | what do a conductor's hand motions mean in a symphony? | I got free tickets to see my local symphony perform tonight and I couldn't help but notice the conductor's hand motions. They're obviously not arbitrary, but I'm totally ignorant as to what they signify. TIA! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d490y/eli5_what_do_a_conductors_hand_motions_mean_in_a/ | {
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"The papers (known as sheet music) that tell the musicians what notes to play also tell them how long to play them. Think of this measurement of time as seconds. \n\nThe music is divided into sections of time on the sheet music. One of the most common divisions is in 4 second sections. These sections are called measures. \n\nSo if the conductor was conducting a song with 4 section measures (also known as a 4-count song I believe,) the conductor would be counting to 4 over and over again. Each movement of the hand represents a different second of that measure, where the movement back to the top starts a new measure. This movement helps keep everyone together at the appropriate pace. It also helps the conductor to emphasize a need to get louder or softer, as the song may require. \n\n",
"They keep the tempo. Indicate the relative volume of each section of the orchestra and generally keep everything in sync. ",
"Most of what the conductor is doing is counting time. The music is divided up into sections based on the rhythm, of usually 2, 3, 4, or 6 beats per section although other numbers can be used. The conductor will follow a known pattern based on the number of beats, so the musicians can see where in the pattern they should be exactly, which helps them all play at the same time (if you want to try to find the sections yourself, [this song](_URL_0_) is a three beat pattern- strong, weak, weak). \n\nThe conductor will also signal to various sections when they should come in if they're having a rest, and will direct sections to play louder or softer if the balance of instruments is wrong.",
"A conductor's duties are:\n\n1. Keep everyone playing in time\n\n2. Make sure that people start playing at the right time if they've had a long break\n\n3. Balance the loudness of different sections of the ensemble.\n\n4. Provide their interpretation of how the music should be played (\"the musicians play their instruments; the conductor plays the musicians\"). This largely happens during rehearsals.\n\nFor a beginner ensemble these duties are in that order of importance—you're not getting a world class performance out of beginners so the interpretation of the music isn't that important, and you need to make sure that they stay in time. For professionals the order of importance is reversed: they're good enough that they know how to keep time and when to come in, but they can't necessarily hear how the sound is balanced and they may have different ideas of how the piece should be played. The conductor helps in those areas.\n\nAs for what the hand waving actually means, there are several layers, corresponding with each of the above points.\n\nFor keeping time, each piece has a time signature which describes the pattern of emphasized and de-emphasized beats. This determines the general shape of the pattern that the conductor will wave. For example, in a piece with 4 beats per measure—the period of time before the pattern repeats—the pattern is roughly down, left, right, up (for the right hand; the left hand would mirror this if you're using both hands). A piece with 3 beats per measure may go down, right, up.\n\nFor letting people know when to come in the conductor may simply look at the section and point, or they may give a couple beat lead-up to that section.\n\nBalancing the loudness of sections is usually accomplished by using one hand as a \"yes, louder\" or a \"no, quieter\" signal, directed at the section in question.\n\nThe rest of the motions can be attributed to interpreting the music. The conductor may use very small, delicate motions when the music is quiet or huge, seeping motions during a grandiose section. This part of conducting is practically interpretive dance.",
"I've played for more than 20 years now. Once your beyond high school and are playing in college or professional groups, the conductor really isn't \"needed.\" We know the music, most of us have it memorized by the time we get to the concert and don't even need the sheet music. Realistically the conductor could just walk up, give a cue to the group to start the song and then go sit down and we'd play and it would sound nice. \n\nWhile yes, some of the arm movements are to help the group stay in time, at the collegiate level and professional level it pretty minimal. There are some songs that have timing transitions that are unnatural feeling for the performers and the conductor helps through the timing. The real gift of a conductor is to put their interpretation of piece in the performance. Like you could get a Gordon Ramsay recipe and make it, following it exactly and try yours and one made by Gordon himself. They'll be similar but different. Since they know the musicians 99% of the time don't needed them for keeping time, the gestures impart stylistic info to the musicians. And what you don't see sitting in the audience are all of the facial expressions as well. So the conductor giving us all this (typically) non-verbal communication tells us how they want the piece performed. ",
"Not much apparently, an orchestra director told me recently that professional musicians could play the entire thing without even looking at him, so go figure."
]
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2p5uqf | how much information can an isp see? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p5uqf/eli5how_much_information_can_an_isp_see/ | {
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"You mean of the data transferred? Obviously everything unless it's encrypted."
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[]
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607byw | why do we frequently add the sound "ee" to the end of names, particularly children's names? | We also do it with animals (kitty) and objects (blanky). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/607byw/eli5why_do_we_frequently_add_the_sound_ee_to_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Not a Scientist, but there was a study that showed that words like \"Quack\" are funny because we open our mouths in a smile to make the \"Wah\" sound, I'm sure the same logic could be applied here, since these things make us happy, Smile + vocalisation = ee sound.",
"Many languages have a \"diminutive\" form, usually a suffix, for names and objects. In English, it happens to be -y (or rarely -ie, same sound); in German it's -lein and -chen; and so forth.\n\nIn other words, \"Why?\" \"Because.\" It's a fairly common construct.\n\n----\n\nNow, if your question was actually \"Why is the standard diminutive suffix in English -y\", IDK."
]
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5rddur | is australia the continent, or is oceania? what's the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rddur/eli5_is_australia_the_continent_or_is_oceania/ | {
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"text": [
"Australia is the country. \n\nAustralasia is the continent and encompasses more countries.\n\nOceania is the much wider region which Australasia is in."
]
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[]
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atlx5d | why is it important for people to appreciate some musical genres such as classical, jazz, and soundtrack music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atlx5d/eli5_why_is_it_important_for_people_to_appreciate/ | {
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"While I'm a huge fan of classical music, I don't hold this view. I think people view classical music as superior because it's associated with wealth and intelligence. ",
"Honestly I think a lot of it has to do simply with cultural heritage. Classical music has roots traceable to the earliest parts of Occidental culture and its zenith arguably corresponds also to the period in history when the societies that birthed it were at their heights. That period of peak achievement cooccurred with the Enlightenment, the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, and other cultural/socioeconomic developments that demarcated the high water mark of Western Culture.\n\nOf course cultural products such as music reflect the richness of their times and Classical music, with its deep roots, precision, formalism, technical demands, and enormous flexibility simultaneously captures some part of the zeitgeist of that era while also having a timeless component that makes it relevant to this day. \n\nEspecially with regard to old pieces, part of the appreciation of listening to them comes from a knowledge of the global context in which they were created, so that the depth of the achievement of the genre can be understood.\n\nBesides any sort of historic context, aesthetically, classical music has a ton of merit. For one, it is completely possible, given the tools and techniques of the genre, to write sheet music (as if coding!) that stirs the soul to any sort of emotion, without the need of lyrics or vocals at all.",
"Certain works of art are part of the \"canon\" of a culture. This means two things:\n\nFirst, they're widely regarded as of especially high quality, and that judgement has 'stood the test of time'. Thus, almost by definition, these tend to be older works.\n\nSecond, they are particularly significant to the culture. They have influenced others, they are referenced by people, they shape the way people in our culture think and feel.\n\nThese are strong reasons why classical music is considered important. With reference to the first point, it's no coincidence that a large proportion of pre-20th century music that we have records of is classical. Classical music also tends to be the music of the elites and the cultured (you can critique this if you want...). Jazz is not quite so old, but it's notable for being appreciated by the cultural elite. (Not exclusively - it's also been the music of the marginalised and the misfits.) It's also notable for being a distinctive produce of the United States in a way that perhaps no other genre is.\n\nSoundtrack music seems like the odd-one-out here. Calling it a musical genre is problematic itself. What links [The Harder They Come](_URL_0_), [Star Wars](_URL_1_), [Psycho](_URL_2_) and [Superfly](_URL_3_) stylistically? Classical and jazz seem like typical recommendations for \"high culture\", but soundtracks don't seem to fit."
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Znh0OM9jiA",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAcQxnJ0djQ",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-VhC9ieh0",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cmo6MRYf5g"
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4w16uj | why is there so much hype surrounding the movie 'suicide squad'? | The movies fans are more die hard than I've ever personally seen for a movie before | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w16uj/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_hype_surrounding_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a very popular comic book series.\n\nThey are advertising the shit out of it. \n\nIt's a lot of characters that are fan favs but haven't really been in a movie before."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
8xqls9 | if alcohol is a poison, why does the body recognize alcohol as a fourth alternative fuel source? (fat, protein, carbs, alcohol) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xqls9/eli5_if_alcohol_is_a_poison_why_does_the_body/ | {
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"text": [
"Alcohol is a 'fuel source' in that it has calories. The fact that the body cannot metabolize it well and it taxes the liver has nothing to do with whether or not it has calories.",
"The current ruling theory is called the drunken monkey theory.\n\nBasically our ancestors that first came down from the trees around 10 million years back found rotten fruit on the ground. Rotten fruit ferments and produces alcohol - alcohol as you have stated is very, very, calorie-dense and collecting fruit on the ground is more calorie-efficient than climbing trees. Therefore it was advantageous for us to evolve the ability to digest alcohol to the level that we do (something that is actually very rare amongst living organisms).\n\nThe theory is also thought to be the main reason behind our affinity with alcohol (pretty much every human civilisation has had a relationship with it and experienced individuals and groups becoming dependant on and abusing alcohol).\n\n[here’s an article if you want to know more](_URL_0_) ",
"Your body has to do something with alcohol when it is consumed. However, your body cannot process alcohol very well directly. It does have enzymes which will break it down into a series of other molecules that your body can deal with in other ways. \n\nThe first stop in breaking down alcohols are a group of chemicals called \"aldehydes\". Aldehydes are actually far more toxic to your body than alcohol is, but this is the only route that your body has for metabolizing alcohol. Drinking alcohol (ethanol) is broken down into Acetylaldehyde, but some types of alcohols are broken down into deadly formaldehyde. Side fact: if you drink antifreeze, the proscribed method of treatment is to have the patient drink ethanol.\n\nAcetylaldehyde is eventually converted into Acetate. Acetate, which is also toxic to the body, is actually what is metabolized by your cells into CO2 and water. Effectively Acetate is the source of calories that you are getting from alcohol. You just have to go through two steps that are more toxic than alcohol, so that you can convert it into calories."
]
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3acx0z | why, after i eat vanilla ice cream, does drinking something like sprite taste extremely sour? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3acx0z/eli5_why_after_i_eat_vanilla_ice_cream_does/ | {
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"When you eat or drink sweet stuff you build up a temporary tolerance. Your vanilla ice cream is sweeter then your sprite. So you eat a little bit of ice cream build up that slight tolerance then you switch to your sprite that is less sweet and you perceive more of a sour taste because you are used to your ice cream"
]
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[]
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4pw4hx | what an arp attack is | What does it mean when an ARP attack is detected? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pw4hx/eli5_what_an_arp_attack_is/ | {
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"Generally speaking an ARP attack is masking your MAC Address to trick the network into allowing you on. When you plug into a network your computer sends out an ARP message to the network. If you copy someone's MAC you can spoof their device/IP and gain network access."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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7a8nmj | what’s the difference between a fortune 400, fortune 500, and a fortune 1000 company? is it just how much money they make? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7a8nmj/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_fortune_400/ | {
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"text": [
"The magazine Fortune publishes a list every year of the 500 top companies by revenue called the Fortune 500. There's no such thing as the Fortune 400 or 1000 but if there were you could assume it meant top 400 or 1000 companies by revenue. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
4w1ynf | why do women wear fancy dresses and men wear suits/tuxes? | Think a very formal setting, like a weddings or celebrity awards shows. Women are expected to wear extravagant dresses with colors and textures and no two dresses ever look the same and it's a huge deal what they wear. Men on the other hand wear some version of a suit or tuxedo where, besides some minor style differences, are more or less identical to to each other. How did this happen? Why isn't it reversed? (Women wear some variation of a the Little Black Dress and men's outfits come in a whole myriad of colors and designs) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w1ynf/eli5why_do_women_wear_fancy_dresses_and_men_wear/ | {
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"It's a disappointing answer, but it's simply what our culture has evolved to expect. For most animal species, the male is the extravagant one trying to be unique and appealing. Humans flipped the script, with females being the sex that generally attempts to show off their beauty to attract mates. In order to be unique and appealing, women wear all sorts of extravagant dresses.\n\nIf you want to take a trip through that cultural evolution, try Google.",
"Both articles are designed to accentuate the silhouette we find attractive.\n\nA dress that fits should make a woman appear to have an hour glass figure.\n\nA suit or tux cut right should make a man appear broad and long.\n\nWhy that's what each sex evolved to be attracted to? Those are longer answers with some parts health identifiers and some parts culture."
]
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[],
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5th694 | how self driving tesla cars navigate so well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5th694/eli5_how_self_driving_tesla_cars_navigate_so_well/ | {
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"text": [
"A lot of expensive and advanced computing systems which include multiple cameras, ultra sonic scanners, radars and a butt load of processing power.\n\n_URL_0_ explains it best."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.tesla.com/autopilot"
]
] | ||
2f7svy | how does breeding actually work? | For example dogs, whose ancestor is the wolf. How did we breed a wolf into slowly becoming a bloodhound? If i wanted to breed a dog to be very good at helping me in the garden, how would i go on about it? What is the simplified process? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f7svy/eli5_how_does_breeding_actually_work/ | {
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"Breeding occurs over many generations. \n\nWhat happens is that you start out with individuals that are slightly different from the main strain; maybe this dog likes rooting around in the dirt compared to this one that doesn't, so you breed the dog that likes rooting around in the dirt with another one that also likes rooting around in the dirt, and do this across several couples of dogs. \n\nThe next generation of dogs like to root around in the dirt, but maybe this small group of dogs within the second generation like to dig holes that are around the depth that you want them to dig. So you breed the small group of dogs together. \n\nThe next generation of dogs like to dig holes that are the depth that you want them to dig, but a group of dogs in this third generation like to dig SPECIFICALLY in the garden instead of elsewhere. \n\nThe fourth generation of dogs can then be trained to dig holes in the garden at the depth you want them to dig, exactly where you want them to dig. \n\nBut this is using a trait that can be taught as an example. \n\nYou'd do a similar thing for making a specific type of dog, like pugs; you'd choose wolves that were slightly different from other wolves and continue to breed wolves until you had a dog that was the kind of dog you wanted to have. Some dogs, like the husky, aren't all that different from wolves at all. ",
"By the way, we humans suck at breeding. We do it for selfish reasons and really screw the animal kingdom. I think you should really just go for a smart mutt, then work on communication and training. Many purebred dogs have all kinds of hidden congenital weaknesses due to meddling, because they come from a restricted (limited) gene pool so they look a certain way."
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2kogpl | how are mafia crime bosses able to be publicly known as mafia crime bosses? | This question was inspired by the TIL about John Gotti and his son yesterday. I know very little about John Gotti or the mafia or the legal requirements needed to get people associated with the mafia behind bars. Just from the little I read up on him, he was publicly known as the head of the Gambino crime family for several years before his eventual arrest and imprisonment. I know most of these guys get taken down eventually, but how is it possible for someone to be the known head of an established criminal organization and walk around free for so long? The current head of the Gambino crime family is a guy named Domencino Cefalu. According to his Wikipedia page, he currently resides in Brooklyn with his mom and his “legitimate employment” is a salesman for a bakery. Again, how is Cefalu able to be publically known as the leader of a group infamous for murder, drug trafficking, illegal gambling, fraud, extortion, etc., and at the same time live free at home with his mother?
I get that charges have to be brought up and proven and the FBI spends years building cases against these people. But how is the simple fact that they are the head of a crime family not cause for arrest and prosecution?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kogpl/eli5_how_are_mafia_crime_bosses_able_to_be/ | {
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"They just can't pin anything directly on him, he tells people what to do and others do it so he technically doesn't and therefore gets off free. However, I also have a theory the FBI has a strange sort of leniency towards people like this for the simple fact crime will always exist, may as well know the guy who's robbing you right? It's similar to the Yakuza in Japan, they're not a crime syndicate but rather an actual part of their government because they're so ingrained in Japanese culture that it surpasses the government's power really. If they actively removed John Gotti, someone else or another crime syndicate would take his spot. ",
"Without actually having something to prosecute him for, its technically just a reputation. You could become know for being a murderer but if the police can't pin anything on you then what can they do? Also, the cases they build against these guys can take years and sometimes decades to put together and then try. So, while the FBI is putting together a case, these guys are going about their lives. Keep in mind that you don't get to be the boss of the Gambino crime family without being smart about how to avoid prosecution. They probably do some of their own dirty work but most of it is done by associates. And typically there is only a few people he communicates the orders to directly. Those captains are typically very loyal and not going to snitch (then again Sammy the Bull did snitch to save his ass). Also if you've only got a few guys that can finger you for a crime, then you only have to clip a few people to save yourself.",
"Because the police need substantial evidence and proof to build a case against him, or any other criminal, otherwise the charges won't stick and he'll walk away free. If that happens, they can't bring him up on those charges again because it's double jeopardy. You can't be tried twice for the same crime under double jeopardy laws. So, if the case gets thrown out or he's found not guilty due to lack of evidence, then it's all over. So, it takes time to build a case and gather enough proof.\n\nThe police can't just charge someone with a crime based on what people say or think he/she is. It's all hearsay until there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because some people say, \"I know so-and-so is a criminal,\" that's not enough reason to arrest and charge someone. The police still need proof and evidence to present to the judge/jury. A Mafia boss is only a \"known boss\" because of rumors and hearsay. It's not about what you know, it's about what you can prove.\n\nAlso consider that a boss of an organized criminal association probably has a lot of money and can pay powerful attorneys with lots of influence in the court system. It's all the more reason the police need to build an incredibly strong case against a Mafia boss in order to get the conviction.\n\nThis same legal process happens for everyone, not just Mafia bosses. If the police believe you committed a murder, then they need substantial evidence or else the case will get thrown out. They can't just go by what one or two people think or \"know.\" They need hard evidence and proof that you committed the murder before they can bring you up on charges.",
"Because you need to prove somebody is guilty of an actual crime to put them in prison. You can't just say they're a crime boss and lock them up for that. Even if it is illegal to be a member of a criminal organization you'd have to legally prove that they're a member or boss of that group. They'd probably simply deny that they're part of said group or even that said group exists.\n\nOn the other hand, when bosses like Al Capone and John Gotti become high profile, they tend to attract lots of efforts to take them down because they become high value targets for the government. The people who convict them can built their careers of that accomplishment.",
"Lets say that you have ordered the deaths of 150 people. Now lets say there is absolutely no proof and no way to link you to the deaths. Same idea."
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1bvbyk | the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communications | Google left me even more confused.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bvbyk/eli5_the_difference_between_synchronous_and/ | {
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"Synchronous\n\n\"Existing or occurring at the same time.\"\n\nSynchronous communication happens at the same time, like a phone call.\n\nAsynchronous communication happens at different times, like sending letters."
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flywg8 | with what’s occurring many restaurants have closed their dining rooms and moved to carry out or delivery. how is this much safer? multiple people still touch the food through preparation and delivery. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/flywg8/eli5_with_whats_occurring_many_restaurants_have/ | {
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"There is still some risk, yes. However, at a crowded restaurant you can get infected from the people who sit at tables near you, and that risk is eliminated completely by getting takeout instead. Most of the things governments and businesses and individuals are doing are to reduce risk, not eliminate it completely.",
"The biggest part of this is avoiding having large amounts of random people spend extended amounts of time in relatively close proximity with each other. That's how a virus like this can rapidly spread among a population.",
"You can control the behavior of the finite number of people involved in the preparation and delivery of food with strict guidelines, and significantly mitigate the risk. You don't have the same safeguards in a crowded dining room with tons of other folks."
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2eutnx | champion league's | I'm getting into Soccer, so I'm fairly new at this
Can someone explain to me how the UEFA Champions league works? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eutnx/eli5_champion_leagues/ | {
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"Each country is given a number of spots for the teams in their top league.\n\nThe better leagues get more spots this allows more of the best teams to compete when they are from a league with many good teams. \n\nAll European countries can compete, the lower ranked countries get only one place and go through pre qualifying rounds. \n\nThe actual champions league has 32 teams split into 8 groups. \n\nThey play each team in their group twice. The top two teams go through to the 'round of 16' and the third placed teams drop into the Europa League. \n\nThe winner of the group plays the second place of the next group and vice versa. \n\nEdit-had to make sure about the next part.\n\nThen the teams are randomly drawn against each other for the quarter finals. Up to this point no team could play a team from their own country. Then it's the semi finals and then the final.",
"Round robin to start, knockouts after."
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3jp0yw | why do we make children go to bed at a certain time rather than letting their bodies natural progression put them to sleep? | Is it that they are not capable of understanding the importance of sleep or is it to help with the parents personal schedule? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jp0yw/eli5_why_do_we_make_children_go_to_bed_at_a/ | {
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"It is mostly to maintain a schedule. It probably started so parents could have some time to themselves, but it became more and more prevalent as modern society developed and it became important to maintain common schedules for school, work, etc.",
"In my experience as a mom, it takes about two minutes for the kid to skip past the natural falling asleep phase, and then they are into a manic stay up half the night routine. That means they don't wake up in the morning on time for going to school or me getting to work on time. So, an appointed bedtime ensures everybody is on schedule the following day.",
"There are a few answers to this question. After birth babies are use to an opposite pattern, sleep during the day, alert at night. Some people describe the first 90 days of life as the fourth trimester. During that time we transition the sleep schedule little by little to get them to sleep during the night. Some families sleep train, some fall into the pattern by spacing naps, some fall into it naturally. \n\nThe first example of sleep training is seen most often in families for convenience and necessity. They follow a schedule for their own lives and start one for the babe. Some families just live busy lives and the baby is traveling a lot and falls into the \"regular\" schedule. And then even fewer prized babies, have no fuss at all and sleep next to mom all night long.\n\n Sleep cycles require a lot of self guidance no matter what kind of child you have. When you wake up as a grown adult you have to tell yourself to go back to sleep, or at least lay back down because of commitments the next day. You fight the urge to get up and play, you have the discipline to regulate your sleep. Kids do not. \n\nThey might fall asleep in the car and be in a deep sleep, naturally every night, but the second you stop the car they wake and they want to know what happened, where they are, where's momma and poppa.. They force themselves to talk, ask, open their eyes. They fully wake up, request to walk on their own, discover something truly amazing on their walk in (like a piece of gum on the floor) and then instantly be alert. They started a new cycle, a surge of adrenaline never before seen. They can now stay up for hours. \n\nTo answer your question, this can go on for hours, evan a day. They just don't have the discipline to always sleep in the fulfilling capacity we do. And we no how important sleep is to children, so we create a consistent, calm environment to help them get the sleep their brain needs to grow, process, learn. \n\nEdit :I'm sure there are better scientific answers but this is what I could come up with after a beer while child is asleep\n\n",
"Children need more sleep than adults. Adults putting a kid to sleep around 8 PM isn't pure selfishness.\n\nAlso, sleep is governed by a number of factors, and if you miss the right window of opportunity to go to sleep, you end up having a bad night. If there's one word which constitutes good parenting, it's \"routine\". \n\nIf your kid goes to sleep at 11.30 PM at night, that's not great, but if it goes to sleep at 11.30 one night and 8 the next night and 9.30 the night after, that's worse.",
"My 10 year old will stay up till fucking 4 am. I will then wake her up for the day and she's an absolute terror. Then she'll proceed to stay up way too late again. So as the responsible adult in this situation I have to say NO you cannot stay up till 4, you must go to sleep at 9:30 as you need approximately 10 hours of sleep a night for proper growth and non being a pain in the ass for me. "
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adr3ou | national emergency [us politics] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adr3ou/eli5_national_emergency_us_politics/ | {
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"It grants some particular powers to the President that are not normally available. Before the National Emergencies Act of 1976, the powers were very broad, in fact way too broad, giving the Executive branch an easy sidestep to Congress by just continually riding a national emergency declaration to do as they please.\n\nSince this reform it's been reigned in but there are still over 100 powers available to the President, from removing the ban on chemical weapons in warfare to removing bans on human testing to authorizing constructions not authorized by law through the military, but using only the portion of the military's budget intended for use in construction (which could be money for a new barracks or whatever), though 10 USC §2808 also specifies it can only be military constructions, which the border wall would not be unless manned by military instead of the Border Patrol. There may be other powers I missed that might allow such a project to be forced.\n\nI think the President thinks national emergency is like a God Mode cheat. Once upon a time it kinda was, But now it's much more tame. I may have missed something, even though the guy has no prior experience or education in law or politics surely his advisors do and might be pointing him in the directions he wants to go. That Or he just isn't listening to them and makes assumptions that there's a God Mode cheat."
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36gjzk | what is tesla, why is it such a big deal, and why is it having so many problems? | So it's a great car, right? If it's so great then why is it being met with so much opposition? What even is the opposition? Where can I buy one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36gjzk/eli5_what_is_tesla_why_is_it_such_a_big_deal_and/ | {
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"**What is Tesla:** Well, Tesla is a manufacturer of fully electric cars (as contrasted by hybrids). Electric cars are pretty rad because you can charge them with renewable energy, which is a very good thing considering non-renewables will run out sooner or later (somewhen this century)\n\n**Why the opposition:** Tesla sells its cars fundamentally different from other vendors. Normally vendors rely on local dealerships to attract customers (and in some states, that is even required I heard). Tesla however sells directly to the customer which is a novel concept in the industry and for obvious reasons very scary for dealers because they won't make a cut any more.",
"It's hard to just \"become\" a major automotive company. GM, Toyota, those guys have been around for a while and if you want to play where they play you've gotta bring it.\n\nTesla is the first fully electric car company to really make a run at it. They are growing incredibly fast, their cars (car really) are superb.\n\nThey initially entered the market in 2006 with the Tesla Roadster. a 2 seater sports car. The sports car is where they worked on how the whole wheels, motors and batteries hook together. \n\nAfter a few years they did a luxury sedan (the model S in 2012) and knocked it out of the park. You go to a wealthy suburb anywhere in the country and you could see Tesla cars in every garage next to the Mercedes and BMWs. \n\nThis is a remarkable feat, and is made even all the cooler because it's an all electric company. In addition, they are REALLY putting the money down. Tesla was started by a very wealthy person who dreams big, and so they are building a battery factory to the tune of a billion dollars in California. \n\nIn the coming years the next car Tesla is expected to launch is a mid range SUV. Something to in the $35k range followed up with a sedan at the $30k range. But that's years in the future. The SUV should be out in a year or two, and the sedan an indeterminate time after that. \n\nSo tesla is encountering 2 issues. \n\nThey are ramping up a very complex manufacturing process very quickly. So there are bound to be issues that crop up. Currently the rate that they produce cars is the limiting factor in growth. Once the battery factory (called the gigafactory) comes online, they can start producing the lower cost vehicles. \n\nIn addition to manufacturing issues they face sales issues. The traditional automotive sales model of dealerships is somewhat outdated. Better to have small manufacturer owned retail outlets similar to the Apple store. Dealers were required back in the day when shipping and custom orders were not the norm. In addition to the parts and service that they provide. \n\nTesla has elected not to use dealerships and instead is going to own that infrastructure itself. All the retail stores will be owned by Tesla. But that's illegal in many states. \n\nDue to local politician influence that dealers have, for decades they have been protected in law. Automotive manufacturers MUST use the dealer businesses model to sell to consumers. And Tesla does not want to, so they've been fighting it in court, recently appears to be winning."
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1zfc7z | why can't i see in a mirror | So a little background, I wear glasses and can't see without them. But if I take off my glasses and get close to a mirror I can see myself clearly. Why,when I am that close to the mirror, can't I see my wife who is standing a few feet behind me. I know it sounds odd but isn't every thing that happens in a mirror on the same plane, for a lack of a better term?
It kinda broke my brain and I figured I would ask the group. So someone please explain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zfc7z/eli5_why_cant_i_see_in_a_mirror/ | {
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"no, it's no on the same plane. it's virtual image.\n\nlet's say something have coordinates (x,y,z). in mirror coordinates will be (-x,y,z). so if you're looking at object 10 meters from mirror it's like looking at object 10 meters from you. (in other words: mirrors have depth)",
"When you say the image is all in the same plane, you're probably thinking of a mirror as being in some way similar to a television or computer monitor. That's not the case -- a monitor or television produces its own picture by **emitting** light, whereas a mirror is merely a device for **reflecting** light that originates somewhere else.\n\nThat means that when you're looking at your wife's reflection when she's standing 6 feet beind the mirror, the light from her face is travelling all the way to the mirror. It then reflects off and travels a further couple of inches to your eyes. So in total the light has travelled 6 feet + a few inches, and as far as your eye's lens is concerned it's the same as looking at your wife standing that distance away."
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3bdf9w | why does light dissipate as the ocean gets deeper? | In other words, why is the seabed darker than the surface? What happens to the light as it travels through the water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bdf9w/eli5_why_does_light_dissipate_as_the_ocean_gets/ | {
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"It gets absorbed by microscopic (or larger) particles in the water. This causes the amount of light as you go down to slowly decrease. ",
"Because the water absorbs it, each wavelength gets absorbed at different points though, red is the first to go, and blue is the last. That's why in photos of the deep ocean, everything is blue.",
"Think of this way. \n\nSay you're in a dark room with a flash light and a cargo net. You turn on the light and shine it through the net casting a shadow on the wall. You look at the wall and see mostly light, but just that outline of the net. Now imagine you have another net just behind it. The nets don't perfectly line up so when you look at the wall, you see more shadowy lines and just a little less light is shown. Now say that you repeated this hundreds of times, each time taking just a little more light from the wall. You keep doing this until to virtually no light shines through the nets at all, leaving the wall behind it totally dark. \n\nThis is what happens in the ocean. The flashlight represents the sun, and each net can represent 10 feet in the ocean. the light from the sun shines through the water reflecting off all ocean life and microscopic particles in that layer, leaving just slightly less light for the next 10 feet. And then the next layer does the same, this continues like this until there isn't any light left for the bottom. So that's why you have no light in deep parts of the ocean, It's just being blocked by everything above.\n\nAnother way of looking at this is if you were to take two pieces of Glass, one starting at the surface and the other starting that the dark zone, and sandwich them together, you would not be able to see through it! There would be too many krill, fish, whales, squids, plankton, bacteria, and other things in the way that fill up all the space, effectively blocking any light from passing through. It's as simple as that\n\nedit: for clarity and smoother parts of speech"
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4d5l54 | why is communism (in practice) often related to the removal of culture and traditions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d5l54/eli5_why_is_communism_in_practice_often_related/ | {
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"Because many of the traditions relate to stratification of society rather than everyone being equal and therefore in order to create an equal society they need to be purged from the system.",
"Because in theory some of those cultural traditions may have been used or where interwoven with methods to oppress the masses in the old regime.\n\nIn practice it has more to do with removing threats to your new regime by having your ideology being the only thing left.",
"This is not limited to communism. The emergence of Turkey from the Ottoman empire, Russia under energetic czars, Poland, and other countries were marked by the switching from traditional dress or beard styles in an effort to become more modern.\n\nCommunism has been adopted by revolutionaries everywhere. But they were always national revolutions freeing the country from poor governments of the past. The old government would be corrupt and unresponsive to demands for reform. Communism was adopted by revolutionaries as a reform philosophy. Implementation varied by country. Cuba became a land of literacy and free health care. But political dissension was suppressed.\n\n In China Mao continued the cultural revolution with the red guards suppressing violently old symbols of authority, teachers et cetera.",
"I would maintain that we still have yet to see a communist nation. Nations like the USSR and even China just after the revolution weren't communist because someone held more property than everyone else: the leader. I'm not entirely sure what to call them but it certainly isn't Marxist communism.\n\nThat doesn't necessarily make Marxism right or wrong either, just a different animal.",
"FYI democracy removed Saddam and his culture so its not specifically a communist trait. It happens because of regime change where they want to rewrite history and ensure people who support the old ways aren't allowed to continue. ",
"Because it was never Communism. It's just a great pitch to convince people to give a Dictator Totalitarian power. All the high ranking officials end up living in mansions, while people starve.",
"I live in what the government calls a \"socialist\" nation: Venezuela, though the Constitution doesn't endorse a particular ideology, the government likes to call it \"socialism of the 21st century\" (as proposed by Dietrich and made popular by Chávez).\n\n\nAs usual, people tend to confuse ideological/political left with populist authoritarianism, because that is the way political left manifests in real life.(well, most of the time at least)\n\n\n In order to impose said authoritarianism, the strongman or leader has to follow a recipe:\n\n1. Criticize the establishment. It has to start somewhere. Capitalizing the displeasure of people with the establishment is a safe bet.\n2. Propose complete reform through a revolution that will empower the people (\"people\" meaning the elite that the strongman allows in power).\n3. Take over the means of production with the excuse that \"giving it to the government is giving it to the people\".\n4. Monopolize media and information sources to alienate people, give them speech tools to defend the ideology and exalt the \"achievements of the people\".\n5. Consolidate power through unified ideology and parties, grabbing a banner and putting a title on the \"way our nation does it\".\n6. Take control over the military branch by empowering them to avoid being deposed by an armed military coup.\n7. Turn dead figures into martyrs and add heroic features to them. \n8. Condemn publicly the practice of established religion to reduce the influence major religious leaders have over the people (opium of the peoples, and what not).\n\nFor each one of these steps to work, there must be a progressive abandonment of the previous establishment's ways. Eventually people get used to the new ways, liberties are lost and dissent is practically erased or condemned to operate underground.\n\n\nThe monopoly of the information and communications is the key to answer your question, the guys that run the show, decide the script, the storyline and the characters that will appear.\n",
"Communism tries to solve a problem in capitalism where Capitalists (basically, people who have enough money that they can simply invest in things rather than working) get rich by taking a portion whatever Workers (people who have to work for a salary/wage to live) produce. Communism tries to solve this problem by organizing Workers to rise up, get rid of the current investment banking system as well as rights to land/natural goods, and create a system where Workers own all the factories/workshops/etc. In this world, everyone is a Worker, and they all share equally in what they create.\n\nFor this to happen, Communists want to organize the Workers to cause a revolution. However, Capitalists, and even some non-Capitalists don’t want this. It’s obvious why Capitalists like this system. But, some non-Capitalists also benefit from it (like upper-managers in companies or Bishops, both of whom live lavish lifestyles, while producing little-to-nothing, because they help the Capitalists control the Workers). And while Communists are organizing Workers to revolt, Capitalists and their supporters (called Petit Bourgeois) are working to keep the system like it is. ([Here is an illustration of the idea of Petit Bourgeois supporting Capitalists](_URL_0_)).\n\nSo, while Communism doesn’t inherently want to remove culture or religion (in theory), in practice, many cultural/religious institutions benefit from capitalism, and are run by Petit Bourgeois who want to stop the Workers from organizing, so they need to be destroyed as well for the Worker’s revolution to succeed. However, Communists are not against culture or religion. In fact, Communists support the arts and civil society (as long as it is not counter-revolutionary). Also, some Communist movements have actually been religious as well (like the Kibbutz movements in Israel).",
"The most infamous example of this was the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. They declared Year Zero: _URL_0_"
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4cdcko | what's the difference between based on a true story and inspired by true events specifically pertaining to movies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cdcko/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_based_on_a_true/ | {
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"Based on a true story means that the story attempts to tell what happened. \n\nInspired by true events means \"this thing happened... what can we imagine that might have happened next?\""
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5pkh7z | what happens when the founder of a private company owning 100% of the stocks decides to take the company public , but decides to keep control of 51% of the shares? | * Would the SEC oppose that?
* Would they be able to appoint members of the board?
* Would they be able to serve as the CEO?
* Would the board be able to fire the CEO? And if that's the case what happens given that the CEO would also be the major shareholder?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pkh7z/eli5what_happens_when_the_founder_of_a_private/ | {
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" > Would the SEC oppose that?\n\nNo, absolutely not, this is VERY common for companies, many owners retain huge amounts of their company when going public\n\n > Would they be able to appoint members of the board?\n\nYes\n\n > Would they be able to serve as the CEO?\n\nYes, there is nothing to prevent anyone from working at the company, they could own 100% of the shares or 0%, they just work there.\n\n > Would the board be able to fire the CEO? And if that's the case what happens given that the CEO would also be the major shareholder?\n\nYes the board could fire the CEO, but since the owner is on the board, and has the majority of votes, he would have to vote to fire him/herself or \"step down\" voluntarily."
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5jfbiv | who and how satellite flight paths/altitudes are chosen? | With so many satellites out there how do we not here of more of them colliding? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jfbiv/eli5_who_and_how_satellite_flight_pathsaltitudes/ | {
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"Space is big. I don't mean to belittle the dangers of space debris but [most of those debris maps](_URL_0_) are deceiving. It looks insanely cluttered because the points are enlarged enough to be visible but is unrealistic to their true size. And then you also have to realize while they look so close together zoomed out like that, they're tens if not hundreds of miles apart when you consider the scale.\n\nAs for satellite paths, it depends on the functionality and what that means in terms of orbit. Satellites that map/image the earth are (usually) in low earth orbit. Lower in general is just better because it's (a) cheaper and (b) gives you better resolution because you're closer to what you're observing.\n\nAnd usually they are in polar orbit (that is, they circle the earth vertically, crossing the north/south poles with each orbit). This allows it to cover the entire surface of the earth as the earth. For example a low orbiting satellite orbiting horizontally, roughly following the line of the equator, would never capture any strip beyond the equator. As well it helps maximize taking \"strips\" of the earth in close to the same time of day (thus relatively consistent lighting and shadows).\n\nFor satellites that stay stationary relative to the earth, like GPS or weather satellites that view the same side all the time, they have to go to much higher orbits because, barring the complicated details, it's the position that best allows them to have an orbital period that syncs with the Earth's.\n\n*edit: added corrections about polar-orbit."
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9i65gy | why different metals have different sound /bass when they're hitting together? | Edit:thank you for your answers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9i65gy/eli5_why_different_metals_have_different_sound/ | {
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"They have different densities. The vibrations that go through the different metals are affected by this, in the sense that some metals ring or project more.\n\nThis is probably oversimplifying it, since my initial understanding of this stuff comes from explanations as to why instruments such as flutes might be made out of different metals, such as nickel alloys,silver, or gold (of varying karatage). In the case of flutes, silver and gold tend to sound warmer (less shrill) than the nickel alloy.",
"Because sound travels at different speeds depending on the density of the medium. Which means harder materials have more high frequencies in the mix Also bigger objects can produce longer soundwaves ( lower notes). Also both described situations can be true for the same object at the same time ( a large bell, a big steel pipe etc)\n\n",
"Density and elasticity i think?"
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8aakq9 | how do cities located in two different states function? | For example, Bristol, Tennessee, and Bristol, Virginia, share a common downtown. How does this work? Aren't there tons of issues with police, courts, medical care, taxes, and other things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8aakq9/eli5how_do_cities_located_in_two_different_states/ | {
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"They’re two different cities that happen to be very close to each other. \n\nNothing really different here except maybe some more cooperate between the two governments. ",
"There is some red tape for this kind of situation, but there is not much problems. The border is known exactly (and even marked at times). \n\nSome will have two mayors who cooperate, some will have negotiated to have a single city government. If it is split there will be two police forces who cooperate (not unlike major cities with multiple precincts like NYC). If it is a single city government then there will be one police force. \n\nTaxes are collected based on where you live and there are standing laws regarding how to handle out of state work. Sales tax will be applied based on the location of the Store. \n\nBoth sides of the city will likely have a hospital (or several depending on size), or the States may share insurance networks. \n\nCourts will be based on the State that you commit the crime in. \n\n",
"They are separate cities that encompass a metro area, but each municipality runs its own government services and taxes to cover the costs. There might be some regionally planning commissions for some things that do need to be regional, like transit.",
"It's two cities -- Bristol, TN and Bristol, VA. Two cities with two different governments and police departments and courts and taxes and everything else. They just happen to have the same name.\n\nCulturally, it can be considered the same city -- you can drive down State Street and just think \"I am in Bristol\" and it may not matter to you which side of the street you are on -- but it's different cities on each side.",
"Pretty much the same way any two cities right next to each other operate. Kansas City KS and Kansas City MO aren't that different from Minneapolis and St. Paul, or Dallas and Ft. Worth, or even Omaha NE and Council Bluffs IA. They just happen to have the same name. Usually, there are some sort of intercity organizations that help coordinate these things."
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3wjpwa | how can animal keepers get really close to animals like tigers or lions and not be killed? | I've always thought that large cats like Tigers and Lions were almost always hostile, yet you sometimes see gifs of animal keepers basically hugging those types of large cats. How is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wjpwa/eli5_how_can_animal_keepers_get_really_close_to/ | {
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"Most animals don't know whether or not they can kill a human, so they won't try unless in a desperate situation. Also, trainers usually imprint on animals at a young age so that they feel comfortable around the trainer, basically like adopting them.",
"Most animals basically only ever kill for two reasons:\n\n- They're hungry\n- They feel threatened\n\nSome, like cats, will also kill for sport.\n\nIf you keep a captive animal fed and treat it with respect, understand its mentality, and earn its trust, you will probably never run afoul of any of these conditions.\n\nNow, there is always the possibility that a dangerous animal will suddenly attack for no apparent reason, but it's extremely rare.",
"Animal keeper here. When I first worked with lions, for example, the females were quite fine and docile but the male was incredibly aggressive, attacking the fence and growling (the growling at such close proximity is the most incredible and unexplainable feeling, it's bass-like, loud and it resonates in your chest). After a while, he mellowed out with me once he got to know me. The females would even purr and face rub their face against the fence, however we were very hands off and didn't get so close as maybe 2 metres away."
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2hl22f | can solar energy be used to propel a spaceship toward the sun? | Let's say we have a technology that can translate solar energy into movement in space. Is there a law that prevents this energy to be used to propel an object toward the source of the energy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hl22f/eli5_can_solar_energy_be_used_to_propel_a/ | {
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"Technically yes. If we are talking a solar sail, it is sort of possible. \n\nThe Earth orbits the sun at about 18 miles or 30km per second. Going (significantly) slower than that can de orbit you, making you unable to escape the gravity of the sun and eventually it'll pull you in. \n\nIf you time it where the Earth is farthest from the sun (and at it's relatively slowest point) use the sail to go away from the sun and escape Earth's gravity and then pull away the sail, you'll eventually slow down and then fall towards the sun.\n\nOr if you are good at math, you could use the sail to head towards Mars, use Mars gravity to turn you back towards the sun.\n\nIt'd be way easier with diagrams. ",
"It's totally do-able (by which I mean theoreticallly possible). First, you could just use the solar energy on solar panels to make electricity running ion engines to generate thrust in any direction you like. \n \nUsing a solar sail is more interesting. Presuming you can get into an earth orbit to start, you can get away form the earth easily enough, but you're still orbiting the sun at about the same speed. It takes a change in velocity (delta V) to move closer to the sun. You won't naturally fall, not ever, and it takes an insane change in velocity to get down to the sun (hundreds of times what it takes to get from earth to space. \n \nIf you aim the sail at 45 degrees to the sunlight, so photons would be bouncing off the sail and heading in the direction you're heading (prograde) then the reaction force is your thrust, which would be 45 degrees off your retrograde vector. That would cause you to slow in your orbit, which would gradually bring you closer to the sun. Making the angle sharper would mean fewer photons hit, but the thrust they generate would be closer to your retrograde vector. There will be some optimum angle which it would take some calculation to figure out. \n \nGravitational slingshots are a possibility, but then you're not really translating solar energy into movement, but angular momentum of a celestial body into movement. ",
"If we say \"solar energy\" is any energy created by the sun, and we consider that the gravity created by the sun will pull you towards the sun, then that is very possible. (I know I didn't use all those terms correctly, but its an interesting way to look at it.)",
"Yes, for reasons much simpler than people are making it.\n\nSolar sails can tack similarly to how wind sails can; exploiting tricks of geometry to get the net force on the vessel in a direction which is different from the direction of wind/light.\n\nGravity does tend to pull towards the sun, but if you're in orbit gravity will be pulling you in a rough circle around what you're orbiting.\n\nTacking with the solar sail can get you on a trajectory towards the sun.\n\nEDIT: Diagram - _URL_0_"
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5a7hbz | why were people in the usa with regular jobs (teacher, union factory worker, nurse, etc.) able to buy a house, afford university, have retirement savings, and offer their family a secure, stable life in the past but no longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a7hbz/eli5_why_were_people_in_the_usa_with_regular_jobs/ | {
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"The pricing of houses, education, and the general cost of living has skyrocketed with inflation over the past few decades while standard wages have almost stagnated. The American economy has grown, leading to the inflation, but not everyone's piece of it has grown. There is more wealth being generated but it is generally kept by those running the companies that generate the wealth rather than used to increase wages. ",
"As the economy changes, so do house and food prices, and the amount of money that certain jobs pay. In certain areas teachers get paid a lot, and in others they make close to nothing. This is all dependant on how promineminent education is in the area and the budget that that certain school district receives. ",
"Because human nature dictates that \"oh we want just a little more profit...ok just a little more.\" And being that it's a slow creep, people are conditioned to accept it. And generations later, colleges are money mills, real estate prices aren't based on reality, pensions are a thing of the past because \"fuck you. If you don't want the job someone else will\". \n\n ",
"Most families used to have just one car. Most wives, some husbands stayed home and raised kids. If spouse needed the car, he or she took spouse to work that day. Car payments are high and most families now have them as routine. TV was not $100+ per month. Phones weren't $50.00 per month. What people now consider necessities, weren't necessities a few years ago. People also eat out more now. It all adds up.",
"To be fair I would take nurse out of that comparison.\n\nNursing is highly skilled and one of the few jobs where somebody can come right out of college with a BSN make 70 to $80,000 a year. This is more than most families make and somebody making a salary should be able to buy a house. That is what they making a Southern state where housing in a decent area hovers around the 200s.\n\nTeachers always made low and most Factory worke is low skill. I think the fundamental question is why cant low skill workers afford these things. Well globalization happened. America is not the top dog of the fifties and sixties. You can still do great in America but you need a skill of some sort.",
"The world you describe is basically the postwar world from the late 1940s through the 1970s, though for reasons I'll get into, the loss of that world was hidden from public consciousness in a variety of ways.\n\nLet's start with the GI generation -- the men that fought WWII and the women who kept the home front going. In the late 1940s the acceptability of a social welfare state that provided at least some of the basic necessities of life to all citizens was pretty widely accepted. A lot of people believed that the descent into fascism and communism was caused by economic instability--people were so desperate for any form of security that they embraced dictatorships of one kind or another.\n\nThere was a also a huge fear that with the war ending and war production winding down, the Great Depression would return. So to keep the economy up you had to had people buying stuff, and in turn making stuff for people to buy would keep the factory workers employed who were no longer making tanks and airplanes. \n\nPart of this was taken care of by the fact that, while a lot of workers (including a lot of women) had made very good money during the war but because everything was given over to war production there was nothing to buy, and everyone was encouraged to give to the war effort by buying bonds, so people had savings.\n\nSo to make sure that the economy stayed stable and there wasn't too much disruption, and to repay veterans for their service, several big programs for veterans were put in place. NOTHING like this had existed before the war -- programs to help people en masse attend college and purchase homes. At the same time the idea that the state should subsidize certain things meant that states were building and expanding state university systems while keeping tuition low. The states and federal government were investing heavily in infrastructure which was tilted toward suburban development, so lots of investment in highways that went into urban working centers from places that used to be rural. People could marry, have kids, buy a home AND go to college all at the same time because of GI bill benefits. And they did.\n\nBut college isn't for everyone and that's okay because at this time the country still had a robust manufacturing base, unions were strong and negotiated good pay and benefits through collective bargaining (there were problems with this later, obviously but at this point it was largely upside). Basically through various sources that were unique to the time, a larger number of Americans than ever before had more money , access to home buying and higher education for those who wanted it -- plus our economy was roaring because we were the least damaged of all the large trading nations coming out of the war. Not only were our own people consuming everything we could put out, but American products were being exported all over the world.\n\nThe bottom line of this was that what we now think of as THE American way of life developed -- wife stays home, raises kids, husband works either white or blue collar jobs (plus the large population still in agriculture), and it was all doable on one income. It's really important to recognize that while it was a good time for a lot of people economically, it was an outlier in all of American history, let alone world history. And so many people being comfortably well off also meant that habits developed that had not been there or hadn't been as prominent as in the past, such as the idea that you had to get a new car every year, upgrade appliances in kitchens and entertainment (radio -- > TV -- > color TV -- > cable etc.) as new latest and greatest came along, etc. \n\nAnd this kept going pretty strong all through the 1960s, which means that the Baby Boomers who are now retiring grew up in a time of plenty pretty much from birth through adulthoods. \n\nThe economic growth hit a wall in the 1970s, and there were a variety of reasons. Competition from recovered nations who no longer needed to buy our products because they made their own AND were beginning to export to the US in real numbers. There was a nasty oil shock/shortage in 1973. And inflation hit hard -- it was a huge problem throughout the 70s. Real wages vs cost of living pretty much stalled out in 1973 and have never gotten back in line again. Right as the Baby Boom generation hit the point where they were settling down, having careers, marrying, having kids etc. 1) the economy got a lot tougher and 2) they were making less money. And it was felt pretty strongly. \n\nHowever, several things offset that. Starting in the 1970s, the number of women in the work force began to grow as women got into fields that had not previously been open to them. Gradually a family having two incomes instead of just one became the norm, and it became less routine for women to stay home with kids. The growth of a lot of one-income families into two-income families meant that individual families had more money coming in even if wages weren't rising in real terms. This helped disguise the slip in real income.\n\nSecond, Paul Volcker became head of the Federal Reserve and implemented a new fiscal policy to try to break inflation. This is how it was explained on Planet Money last year:\n\n\"Volcker believed he had the key to stopping inflation. The Fed's job was to control how much money was in the economy. And Volcker thought it had simply printed too much. So shortly after he took office, he made a big announcement. The Fed was going to tightly restrict the amount of money in the economy. The result - not what he had hoped. The thing he was trying to fix, inflation, got worse. It went from 12 percent up to 14 percent. And meanwhile, the economy started to crash. When you restrict the amount of money in the economy, it gets harder for people and businesses to get loans. So now we had inflation and a recession. Millions of people lost their jobs.\"\n\nThe recession that this brought on lasted through 1982. Then things finally started to get better. Inflation began to drop. It pretty much went away and hasn't been back.\n\nSo even with two earners, income still wasn't keeping up with the cost of living. And more people were falling further behind -- farmers, blue collar workers whose jobs were going overseas. Industries like steel and fabric mills and clothes making closing down and taking towns with them. But most people still were mostly making it. Another thing that covered up some of the weaknesses was that credit kept get easier to get. Credit cards, loans, second mortgages, home equity lines -- and people were encouraged to tap them for things like paying for college for kids or even for just vacations. \n\nIn the 90s and 2000s a lot of prices rose slightly or stayed steady. Some things even dropped in real terms. You pay less now for cheap basic items of clothing like tee shirts and sweatpants than you did 20 or 30 years ago because they are made overseas and transport is pretty cheap. \n\nOn the other hand, some things started to rise A LOT. The biggest ones were healthcare expenses -- even WITH insurance just the copays and deductibles of a major illness could bankrupt a family--and education. The housing bubble in the 2000s was insane, and a whole other topic, but people who bought at the peak of the bubble between 2005-2007 were screwed. Many people had gotten and used all the credit they could. And real incomes, after 30-40 years of not really rising, were finally obviously way behind. \n\nTLDR: In the postwar period there were government subsidies and a set of economic circumstances that brought about the prosperity you describe. Before WWII relatively few people had that kind of middle class economic security. After WWII more people than ever before had it, and it seemed like a permanent thing.\n\nWhen things started to change in the 1970s, two big trends kept most people from noticing for a long time -- women going to work and two-income families becoming the norm, and more ways to access \"easy credit\" so that you could keep up with expenses but at the risk of building up debt. Things were getting shakier in the 2000s and the cracks were starting to show but the housing bubble and bust really showed how rickety it all was.",
"Another factor in America's success post WWII is that much of the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins. In the 1950s, my buddy Wayne's dad worked in a tractor factory, and could support a family with three kids and a wife at home because they could sell the tractors all over the world. Plus low housing cost, low interest rates.",
"They still are.... Two teachers combined make more than I do and I bought a house and put considerable amounts into savings. And I live in a state with pricier house markets. It depends on how much you budget for different things. There are also a lot more luxuries that you are expected to own than back in the day. \n\nOn the other hand college and real estate have skyrocketed while salaries have not matched across the board. "
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9edjn1 | why do two humans sound different, even while singing the same note in the same octave? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9edjn1/eli5_why_do_two_humans_sound_different_even_while/ | {
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"The soundwave produced by a human singing a note is not a single frequency. Compare it to a xylophone at that note or a tone generator. The majority of the energy in a singer's note might be the right frequency (presuming they are singing on key) but there are lesser harmonics that give it the \"well rounded\" sound. These other harmonics are different among singers, although the \"voice print\" notion that they are unique is somewhat controversial.",
"Humans don't sing pure notes. \n\nThey also produce harmonics which are notes at other frequencies. \n\nWhich frequencies they produce and at what levels is different from person to person and has to do with the size, shape, and condition of their vocal chords and also how much force and speed they push the air through their vocal chords with.\n\nThis is called tone color and it's also the reason different instruments playing the same note sound different from each other. "
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3i79gg | stocks are down worldwide (apparently as bad as the 2008 financial crisis). what does this mean for your average joe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i79gg/eli5_stocks_are_down_worldwide_apparently_as_bad/ | {
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"Unless your \"average Joe\" is investing actively... probably not much.\n\nIt's a bloodbath on the market today... but this has all the making off an overreaction/panic (the market has dropped 1500 points in 25 hours of trading.... and the world isn't currently being attacked by aliens) so things will likely stabilize out and recover in the coming weeks.\n\n",
"Could someone get into stocks when they start recovering? Or buy bonds or something?",
"As of 11 AM the Dow has regained 2/3rds of the initial loss this morning. I'm not too worried.",
"For the average joe, a stock dropping into a recession will inflict what happened in 2007 with the burst of the housing bubble. So job loss will happen depending on the severity. Your 401K is invested heavily in the stock market so if we were to have a recession then your retirement can drop too. Now this is no where near what happened then nor is it a recession at all. Stocks go up and go down constantly, smart investors are buying right now and as I speak the U.S. Stock Market is coming back and we will more than likely see it to be up close to where it was later this week. \n\nTLDR: nothing to worry about, there's not a huge financial bubble that can burst any minute. As long as there is no bubble to burst, or war to start we should see a steady influx in the stocks. They will rise and lower as expected but nothing serious. ",
"My pension pot is worth £1000 less this week than last. Since I've a long way to go before I retire that doesn't concern me. However, if I was due to retire next week, a fall such as this could put a real damper on my retirement plans. I'd say most folk who invest in the markets generally have the wherewithal to ride the fluctuations - even the big ones",
"Well it depends. If it is a minor correction (a euphemism used for a drop in inflated values) nothing. The stock market is volatile and will continue on an upward trend in the long run with peaks and valleys. If it is an actual crash, your retirement will be worth much less, unemployment will go up, and wage growth will slow. Under the US current policies, in order to \"revive\" the economy, QE efforts will be likely redoubled. This does not add value to the economy, but instead creates inflation in the stock market. Prices will go back up creating the illusion of a recovery, and settles the markets. In the short run, this really just limits the stock buying power of the average Joe, and makes a lot of money for the people that had enough cash reserves to buy a bunch of stock while prices were low. In the long run, the inflation in the stock market caused by QE will not be seen on everyday commodities until stocks are sold and that money is used to buy everyday good (the retirement age for those in the stock market). \n\nTl;DR In the long run, nothing if it is minor, or you are going to get fucked twice if you are in the US in order to maintain a \"stable\" yet inflated market. ",
"That means Joe needs to make his company more money and then invest heavily in the market. It always goes down, then jumps up up up.",
"This is nowhere near as serious as 2008. The recent stock market decline is due, almost entirely, to the Chinese market re-adjusting to compensate for undue gains it made in the past 12 months.",
"Even after today, stock indexes are still up on the end of last year, and US indexes down only a few percent. Two forces drive the market: the fear of losing money, and the fear of losing out. So you see these wild swings as folks chase the herd. \n\nFor the average Joe: if you're working for a company that is losing money (startup or poorly performing bigger company) money is less available and your job is more at risk. You'll find it a bit harder to get a loan or a mortgage. But until the meltdown becomes sustained and 'official' then not much more than this for now. ",
"It means your average Joe can now invest into the stock market at a pretty good discount compared to a couple of weeks ago. ",
"As someone who has worked in the markets since 2007...I can tell you that reaction wise this is nothing like 2008. That's media spin talking. Back in 2008 there was real craziness. Watching companies die, and not knowing when (or if) the DOW was going to bottom out. There were a couple scares, and several layoffs. Somehow I was able to keep my job, and even prosper a bit. But today doesn't feel anything like that.\n\nThat being said, I believe we've been riding high for quite a while so I've been waiting for the market correction to occur. The numbers just didn't match in my opinion.",
"Why is it as bad as 2008? The drop is no where near the 20 - 70% drop in world indexes as 2008.",
"Thanks for calming me down fellow redditors! I-I didn't know what to with my high risk investment portfolio! At first, my mind was telling me BUY, BUY, BUY! And then my wallet was telling me SELL, SELL, SELL! ",
"The answer here is yes and no. Is this as bad as 2008? At this point in time, no. Can it be as bad and worse? The answer is yes. The problem we have is that we do not know what will happen in the next month to determine whether or not things will be worse. I know a month is a lot of time, but there are enough economic indicators, including the Fed Meeting on the 16th and 17th of September to influence decision making and reactions. The news of the Chinese Market dropping 20% is isolated to China for the most part. 98% of the Shanghai Index is owned by Chinese nationals. Only 2% is owned by Foreign Investors. That crash had more effects in showing that China's Manufacturing has been on a decline since the start of the 2nd Half of 2014 and has hit a 77 Month Low. That sent markets dropping more than anything else. This is important because it shows how much of an impact China has on the global markets. \n\nSo what does this mean? Shit can get crazy real fast. The VIX (the index that measures Volatility in the marketplace) hit 53. What that means is that there is significant volatility being priced into the market. Volatility isn't the only thing that this \"crash\" has an effect on. By looking at purchase orders and revenue figures by region, companies are being hit with declining orders from China which causes a hit to their revenue stream. Burberry, for example, took a hit in revenue because Chinese imports were down 10%+ in the last quarter. That's the kind of correction that is more worrisome than China's market crash. Decrease in revenues for companies around the world has more of an impact that the markets dropping. ",
"I have a 401k with a pretty decent amount of money in it. Should I panic and do something crazy, or do nothing?",
"This is not as bad as the 2008, maybe numberwise, this drop was expected and consider a correction drop",
"Anyone who has a 401(k) account who is nearing retirement just started crying because the value on their account dropped equivalent to a couple of years of contributions, meaning that retirement is now postponed indefinitely until the market recovers the value they lost today.\n\nOn the good side, you should now increase your contribution to your 401(k), because you are buying stocks at a discounted rate, and when the market recovers, you will have that much more.\n\nIf you have the ability to borrow from your 401(k), and you have any outstanding small loans, do that now, because you will be paying yourself back at an interest rate instead of paying whatever credit card company or bank you owe, and since stocks are cheap, you will end up buy more at a discount rate than you pulled out, resulting in a bigger retirement account than you would have had otherwise because of low prices today, increasing value tomorrow, plus all interest on that loan going to your account instead of someone else further increasing value. \n\nPlus, it is usually taken directly from your paycheck, so you cannot miss a payment. \n",
"matter fact.. this might be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.. \nIt's China that we are talking about.. non-regulated markets, corruption, etc.. looking at how fast the market has grown in China.. usually everything that rises will eventually fall.. not even America was that profitable at their prime.",
"This is nowhere near as bad as the financial crisis. From peak to trough, the S & P 500 declined by 55% during the financial crisis. It lost literally over half of its value (though subsequently recovered). So far in this latest episode, the S & P 500 is down 11% from its peak. It's scary but it's *worlds apart* from the financial crisis.",
"Nothing. This means absolutely nothing. If you're an average Joe or Jane with a 401k or an IRA smartly invested in index funds, you'll probably notice a smallish downtick in overall value if you look at your end of month statement. In 20-30 years when you withdraw your money at retirement, it will have mattered not a bit. \n\nSeriously, the day to day fluctuations of the global stock markets are unimportant: what you care about is long term growth. The market will go up again, and it will go down again. At some point closer to retirement you should shift your money away from stocks to fixed income products like bonds to reduce the risk of losing money if there is a down tick close to your retirement age. \n\nBut right now? You're in great shape! This market downturn means that for the next few months until it recovers you're getting fund shares at a discount!",
"There are a few levels of conservative investing depending on how you think the market can go.\n\n* Do an index fund get good long-term gains\n* Shift to bonds to avoid turmoil in corrections or world market events\n* Move to Gold if bond yeilds are low\n* Ammo and Canned goods are a sound investment if you think the market is imploding and civilization is collapsing\n\n\nJoking aside, most average Joes have a 401k that got hammered for a few hours and bounced right back. Gains and losses aren't real until you cash out, so if you don't cash out like an idiot on a down day, then you're in good shape."
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eg1dd5 | why are noise-isolating headphones so bad at blocking out certain noises? | I had a burrito covered in foil for lunch and it sounded like I was in WW2. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eg1dd5/eli5_why_are_noiseisolating_headphones_so_bad_at/ | {
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"To understand noise cancellation, you first need to recognize that sound is just a bunch of overlaid waves of varying frequencies. If I want to 'cancel' one of those waves, all I need to do is add a wave of the same frequency/amplitude shifted 180 degrees. Put another way, if I record a sound and delay the playback just the right amount, I will be able to nullify a specific frequency.\n\nHowever, this is dependent on the sound remaining the same over time. I'm not actually cancelling sound based on what it is now. I'm cancelling it based on what it was in the past. If the sound has changed between then and now, I'm going to get it wrong, the sounds won't cancel and it will just be a mess.\n\nNow, for sounds like an airplane engine, noise cancelling works amazingly well. It's a low frequency sound of nearly constant amplitude that lasts for much longer than our delay period. Our noise cancelling headphones can eliminate it with ease. While there's going to be a bit a muddiness when the airplane engine starts up and when it shuts down, that's nothing compared to the hours where we're cancelling it just fine.\n\nBut think about your foil-wrapped burrito. Every time you crinkle it, you're creating a very short duration impulse of sound. This impulse cannot be predicted by your noise cancellation. So what happens is that it goes through three steps: \n1. Not cancelling anything, hearing tin foil full volume. The noise cancellation hasn't 'caught up' to the external noise yet. \n2. Cancelling the tinfoil. The noise cancellation finally catches up and - for the briefest of moments - is able to compensate. \n3. Attempting to cancel the now absent tinfoil sound. The noise cancellation still thinks you're crinkling but you've stopped. As a result, the noise cancellation is actually adding crinkling to what you're hearing that wasn't there in the first place.\n\nIf Step #2 above is short enough, your noise cancellation actually ends up doubling the amount of sound an external source creates due to this delay issue."
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71s66k | if everything can be broken down to their base elements, why can't life be created with man-made compounds in a lab? | When a sperm fertilizes the egg and life is created, isn't this process just a recipe of a bunch of chemicals coming together? If you can isolate those chemicals and recreate the compounds that make sperm or the egg or whatever else is needed, couldn't we see exactly what is needed to create "life" ? This could lead us to know the very most basic requirements for "life" to occur. Why isn't this a thing?
Thanks,
Curious guy | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71s66k/eli5_if_everything_can_be_broken_down_to_their/ | {
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"Sure, but building it piece by piece without it falling apart partway through would be basically impossible.\n\nHowever, the basic building blocks of life (or at least some of the precursors to them) *have* been created through chemical interactions in lab environments, which might give insight towards how life came to be in the first place.",
"In theory, yeah, but there's stuff we just don't know about big and complicated life forms. Most Viruses are so basic and simple that calling them Alive is a mini-insult to living things. We can 'assemble' a virus then warm it up and watch it act 'just like the real virus' but it's just a simple biological machine that can't *live* without a bunch of other stuff around it to handle the mess.\n\n\nWith sperm and eggs, the sperm is really carrying Information. It's held in chemicals, but just adding more of that chemical washes away the information, rather than enhance it. \n\nThe egg has all the components necessary to start building a fresh new human, but it's deliberately not going to start without a co-pilot to help guide the process. That deliberate desire for a co-pilot is vital when the human-building process goes a little wrong, and a 'fresh strategy' is needed to fix it. Technically an egg could be tricked into starting the process all on it's own, but what it builds will not be the healthiest human. It seems the construction process needs a little arguing and idea-bouncing to produce a high quality human :)",
"Sperm are not just made of \"sperm molecules\". They are a bag containing lots of different types of molecules. The DNA strands have 100B atoms in them. Yes, it's just a long chain molecule made of 4 different building blocks, but arranging 100B atoms into a molecule is beyond our technical capabilities.",
"TL;DR: We can, sort of, but not really.\n\nWe know that DNA is made up of particular chemicals, and we know how to make those chemicals. The problem is that the chemicals have to be arranged in a particular way to create that would actually live. We don't have the capacity to direct those chemicals to the correct arrangement, or the knowledge of what arrangements would produce actual viable life.\n\nWhat we could do is create the conditions that would allow life to create itself and evolve by putting those known chemicals together in the proportions that we believe existed in the early earth. But, you know, evolution is a long process, and we might not see anything resembling useful results for thousands if not millions of years.\n\nWe have managed to create molecular motors and other extremely small scale constructs, so it's possible that, in the future, we may come upon the means to arrange DNA in a meaningful way as to create life from scratch- and there is pretty much constant research to understand DNA, which could lead to knowing enough to figure out how to arrange DNA to produce viable life.",
"The English alphabet is 26 characters. The number of things you can say with those 26 characters is unlimited.\n\nThe same thing works with chemicals and elements.\n\nWe know all the basic elements that you have to use to make life - at least Earth type life.\n\nWe just don't quite know how to combine them all to say \"life\" yet.",
"This is a good opportunity to talk about emergent complexity. The building blocks of life are relatively simple, we have our 20 standard amino acids, a large variety of lipids, 5 nucleic bases, some phosphate, and a few important sugars. *looks at ribose*\n\nSimple, right?\nBut as you assemble these basic molecules into functional cellular machinery the issue quickly goes from \"simple\" to \"an impossible mess constructed from the biological equivalent of chewing gum and bendy straws.\"\n\nFor example, it's relatively easy these days to assemble a bacterial genome from scratch. All you need to do is copy an existent bacterium's genome, then build it up one base at a time by performing a tedious chemical reaction thousands of times in a row in perfect sequence. Voila! Here's the rub; you have a genome, but nothing else. DNA by itself doesn't do anything. \n\nOk, so we need to find a way to take that genome and use it. Biological organisms use an enzyme called RNA polymerase 2 to do this. Great, we have a solution, but if we are creating a whole cell using only chemistry we hit our first stumbling block, and boy howdy it's a doozy. Chemically recreating a protein is not easy, it requires a more complex set of reactions than ligating DNA together. The side chains of certain amino acids are reactive, and it takes great care to make sure your synthesis proceeds as planned. Even if you can get the primary sequence of the protein right the protein won't be folded correctly, the steps required for an organic synthesis can require heating, cooling, and changes in acidity that cause a protein to misfold. Plus, RNA polymerase 2 is a protein complex, so you'd need to somehow get this right multiple times and then hope that the complex aggregates properly when the pieces are combined. And that's just for transcription! \n\nYou'd need to perform whole protein synthesis for ribosomes, many different transcription factors, structural proteins, and transport molecules to make sure that RNA from your constructed genome to the ribosome. You'd also need to create a cell wall and a cell membrane from scratch to house your genome, then create house keeping proteins to keep the interior of the cell \"habitable\" for all your proteins. Finally, remember long ago when I brought up emergent complexity? Everytime you add a protein that protein is going to require cofactors to perform it's functions properly. Sometimes these proteins will be competing for cofactors, sometimes small proteins act as cofactors for large proteins, and in nearly every case each protein is part of a feedback loop that influences other things in the cell. You'd need perfect control of thousands of factors all at once to get anything done, and perfect knowledge of what *should* be done to make that happen.\n\nTLDR: You'd need to perform millions of reactions that are currently impossible because we don't know how to make proteins fold the proper way, and we can't refold misfolded proteins, and the products of your reactions would need to be added to the cell in the right quantity at the right time and under the right conditions. Then you'd need to make sure that none of the things you do are interfering with one another. "
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9tlap2 | how do they make video remixes of viral videos? | I really want to learn how videos like [these](_URL_0_) are made. I do understand that it usually involves sampling audio from a specific video clip, mapping the sample to a controller to be used in DAWs then proceed to compose the music around it. What baffles me is how they actually sync the video to the remixed audio, specially when the beat is rapid/complex.
Is there an easy way to do this using DAWs or video editing software? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tlap2/eli5_how_do_they_make_video_remixes_of_viral/ | {
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"I have not made these types of videos, but I’m starting to get into sampling, so I have an idea of how I’d go about doing it. I have a MacBook Pro with iMovie and Logic.\n\nI would import the video into iMovie while also importing the audio into Logic. In Logic, I would take the interesting sounds and trim them out of the source audio. Those trimmed samples would be programmed into a software sampler (Logic has ESX24 available). I would then play the sampler with either Logic’s keyboard emulator or an external midi controller. After adding in the intro or outro audio and music, I’d import that into iMovie and edit the source video to match. In reality I might work back and forth video to audio to get things right.\n\nSo, that’s how I’d try it for the first time."
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29qyd9 | if you cool down water to sub-freeze temperatures without allowing it to expand, does it turn into ice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29qyd9/eli5_if_you_cool_down_water_to_subfreeze/ | {
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"Yes. It just turns into super ice.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"This is something super interesting about water. Normally, when something freezes, the molecules become more compact and close together, so adding a lot of pressure but not changing temperature can cause something to freeze. Because of the hydrogen bonds between molecules, water is one of the only substances that expands when it freezes. \n\nThis is water's phase diagram (_URL_0_), which just shows which phase its in at certain tmperatures and pressures. \n\n260 K is below water's normal freezing point. But you can see that at, say, 200 MPa of pressure and 260 K, it is still a liquid. It is below its freezing point, but there is not any room for it to expand, so it will not turn into ice.\n\n\n"
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5vr6bk | cruel and unusual punishment | Every time I see this topic come up, the unusual part seems to get ignored, and the action is strictly judged on whether or not it's cruel. Strictly going by the wording it's Cruel AND unusual, not Cruel OR unusual. Shouldn't the frequency of the punishment also be brought into the debate to establish whether or not it's usual? Or is this a translation across centuries issue, where Cruel and Unusual in 18th Century American English just means cruelty today? Or has the courts interpretation of this shifted over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vr6bk/eli5cruel_and_unusual_punishment/ | {
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"It's a 'translation across centuries issue' really. It was originally used to prohibit arbitrary and humiliating punishment of prisoners by the jailers. When it was first used, properly sanctioned punishment like whipping or hard labor sentences were considered perfectly fine. More recently, even prison sentences considered excessively long might be thought 'cruel and unusual' by some reforming groups.",
"The supreme court has made rulings on these things and the way its understood now is that punishment must not be excessive for the crime (if you're going to execute someone they better have caused someone else to die), or excessive for capacity of the perpetrator (which is to say no executing children), or sufficiently degrading and dehumanizing as to be an affront to human dignity (no torture), no punishment that has been clearly rejected by society, and punishment that is blatantly unnecessary. \n\nYou can make a lot of arguments about the existing state of punishments in this country and how they have issues with those standards, but that is the reigning interpretation. \n\nSo we understand cruel in the obvious way and unusual in the sense of being aberrant, that it doesn't follow form necessity or conform to expectations of justice. "
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2rql13 | if the boiling point of water is 100 degrees why does a kettle boil at 60 degrees? | **I did Google This don't worry, I just could not find an Answer**
I cant for the Life of me work this out. and my Facebook friends are all like;
"How do you know it's boiling at 60c"
Well Our Kettle has Settings from 60-100 Degrees Celsius (Australian)
The water is all bubbling like It's boiling at 60c then Shuts off.
At 100c It's steaming.
So does the Boiling Point of Water Means Steam is Produced?
Why does the kettle bubble the water at 60c?
Can someone Please Explain this Like I'm Five :)
**EDIT: Okay Thank you everyone for your Feedback As i can tell so far I'm Australian Not German So thank you for that.
***EDIT: AS i have gathered from your Knowledge and that of Google (now i know what to Google) That Bubbling is From the Element's Temperature Boiling the water that is touching it and Causing it to rise to the Top giving it the Appearance of Boiling. In which that bit of Water has, But the Overall Content of the Kettle is not Actually Boiling until the Total amount has Reached 100c.
This has Been Absolutely Fascinating. *YAY FOR EDUCATION* | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rql13/eli5_if_the_boiling_point_of_water_is_100_degrees/ | {
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"The boiling temperature of water (and water-based liquids) is determined by the ambient atmospheric pressure. Inside a pressure cooker, once the water is boiling and the steam is trapped, the pressure from the trapped steam increases and this pushes on the liquid, which increases its boiling temperature, because it becomes harder for the water molecules to escape from the surface as the pressure increases on it. The heat applied to the liquid by the heat source continues to create more steam pressure and the extra heat also raises the temperature of the liquid under this increased pressure. Both the liquid and steam are at the same temperature. \n[and happy birthday mr. bowie](_URL_0_)",
"Are you talking about an electric kettle? Water boils at 100°C at standard pressure, *no exceptions*! However, the water temperature in the kettle is not even. Around the heating elements, the water rapidly reaches 100°C, even if the water in the rest of the kettle is cooler. "
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67gr2h | what would happen if the earth was sawed in two. beyond the social hysteria, would the halves remain together? would the liquid metal core leak out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67gr2h/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_earth_was_sawed_in/ | {
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"Once you got deep enough, the liquid mantle of the earth, having lost its insulating shell, would cool into solid rock and seal the rift as your sawed. ",
"Assuming the Earth is instantaneously bisected with the separation maybe an inch wide.\n\nHuge global earthquakes as the two halves slam back together, triggering tsunami's basically everywhere. Along the bisection line volcanoes would likely form in the now broken crust. These as well as existing volcanoes erupt, throwing vast amounts of dust and gas into the atmosphere, effectively blotting out the sun and triggering the greenhouse effect. It would easily be the greatest \"natural\" disaster since the dinosaurs. \n\nWhether humans survive is uncertain, but in the larger scheme of things the planet is fine. Underneath the crust the Earth is basically liquid so that will mesh back together fine. Over the extremely long term the new fault line created by the separation would influence plate tectonics, how exactly that plays out would depend where the Earth got bisected."
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4hq48t | why people buy post vinyl era artists on vinyl. | I always thought the point of vinyl was that there were more dynamics than CD, but most of the newer artists compress the crap out of their music making dynamic change very little, compromising the advantage. Do the studios remix and master without as much compression? Please tell me if I'm mistaken. Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hq48t/eli5_why_people_buy_post_vinyl_era_artists_on/ | {
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"CDs actually have a wider dynamic range, wider frequency reproduction, and far less harmonic distortion than vinyl. All of the objective measures of sound reproduction favor CDs.\n\nWhy would people buy vinyl, then? For older people, there is nostalgia attached to the format. Some people like the \"warm\" sound of vinyl; though, that warm sound is the result of less low and high frequency sounds and narrow dynamic range. The vinyl resurgence is just a fad, though.\n\nThere is an ongoing problem called the \"loudness war\" where studios/record labels demand mixes that don't take advantage of the full dynamic range allowed. Most people don't have good listening environments or gear to notice, so people that care about the quality of music suffer. You can't escape it by going to vinyl, as it has less dynamic range to work with.",
"I have no technical knowledge of music production, but I *do* buy current artists' work on vinyl. I do it for a couple of reasons. 1: I enjoy the ritual of listening to vinyl when I'm trying to relax. Its far less convenient to listen to a record than to just click on a song on my PC. But sometimes its soothing to put on a record, sit back with some whiskey, and just listen. \n2: I like having a shelf full of vinyl. My collection of records is as much a decoration as it is a music library. \n\nIt may seem silly to buy music on a more expensive medium when it has nothing to do with the actual quality of sound, but (for me) its about more than just listening. ",
"Well firstly, CDs have as much dynamic range as vinyl does (actually more). Listen to any classical CD as a good example. Secondly, while most newer artists compress everything to death, not *all* do. It's not really a function of the media, but rather just that heavy compression and CDs both became standard at the same time. \n\nSo in a sense, you're right. There's no point to buying a Justin Beiber album in vinyl, at least from an audio perspective. However, an artist like The Black Keys has a very different approach, and use less compression. Also note that some artists make a point of mastering digital and Vinyl formats differently to take advantage of the strengths of the different media.",
"It's like a quartz watch vs a mechanical one. The quartz watch might be superior in terms of timekeeping, but there's something special about getting the same thing done with springs and gears rather than electronics. A digital media player is a piece of electronics. A record player is a type of automatic musical instrument. There's an appeal there for some people. \n\nSome people believe that vinyl sounds better. That's a subjective opinion. What's an objective fact is that good digital is more a more accurate and faithful means of storing and replaying a recording, just as a quartz watch is a more accurate keeper of time. ",
"A folder of MP3s isn't a conversation starter, my vinyl collection is. People find something they get excited about, I throw it on. There's something magical about people sitting around a record player listening to an album. No playlists, no shuffle. No goddamn display screens.\n\nAnd when I'm alone, there's nothing better than putting on a record and relaxing. Have a drink, vape some weed, and listen to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars all the way through."
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axodb3 | how do paralyzed people regain movement? | I saw this guy on twitter who was paralyzed from his shoulders down posting his progress. How do our bodies develop to allow this progression in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axodb3/eli5_how_do_paralyzed_people_regain_movement/ | {
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"The simple answer is: We don't really know.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe more complex version is that paralysis usually involves the destruction of neurons in the spinal cord. These neurons cannot regrow, and so you remain paralyzed.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHowever, most spinal injuries do not involved 100% destruction of all nerves. Many of the neurons are temporarily disabled by inflammation and, as the swelling recedes, they come back online. \n\nThe ability to regain movement over the course of months/years is more related to the *plasticity* (adaptability/pliability) of the nervous system. Let's pretend 10 neurons control movement in your left leg. Your spine gets injured and 8 of those neurons are killed. You still have two left. The ends of those neurons can slowly branch out and hook into muscles that they originally did not control, slowly compensating for the loss of the other 8.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut how and why this works for some people but not others is unclear. There's some cool new treatments being looked into now that \"coax\" neurons to branch out using long term electrical stimulation. \n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
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mh6nx | why isn't two countries' debt to each other cancelled out? | As an example, from this [interactive tool](_URL_0_), the US owes the UK €834bn, and the UK owes the US €578bn.
Why don't the two debts (largely) cancel each other out, leaving the US owing the UK €256bn?
**Edit**: formatting. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mh6nx/eli5_why_isnt_two_countries_debt_to_each_other/ | {
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"This particular chart says it shows money owed by debtors \"both government and private.\"\n\nSo if I, an American, borrow $50 from some bank in England, then that counts as $50 owed by America to the UK.\n",
"A lot of reasons. First of all that debt isn't all from one source to the other. It's not \"The United States Government\" owing money to \"The United Kingdom Government.\" There are both a lot of private entities who owe and are owed money, and the government divisions that borrow are divided up, so they each individually might owe so much. Also, the debt might not be in literal correspondence. Britain might owe us, say 100 pounds and we owe them however many dollars that is, but both countries might think it's advantageous to have that debt owed them. They might think the other currency will fall or whatever or they might want interest to collect, but either way as long as one country sees it as not beneficial to pay off the debt at this time they won't do it.",
"All debt is not created equal.\n\nDebt can be held by individuals, corporations, governments, various government institutions... and so on.\n\nDebt can have different terms (years, interest rate, special legal clauses, forgiveness stipulations, etc.).",
"How come Canada, Australia, China and India aren't there?",
"It's probably sovereign debt which is somewhat different to normal debt that you might owe someone. One way a government can raise money (other than taxes) is to issue/sell bonds, anyone can buy these including you if you want to and have the money.\n\nA bond is like a IOU note from the government, you give them money for the bond and in 10 years they'll pay you back with 5% interest. This can be useful if you have lots of spare money lying around as you can invest it in bonds and if the interest is greater than the rate of inflation you don't lose value on your money, also bonds are considered a very safe investment so people don't mind investing in them. Lots of governments like to buy bonds from other countries as an investment and also to win political favour (hyperbole on my part here), so chances are each country US and UK are waiting for their bonds to mature.\n\nSide note, when you hear people talk about China having a ton of US debt they mean sovereign debts, the Chinese government bought trillions of dollars of US bonds from the US treasury and now the US owes China a that money plus a bit on the top. So when the US wants to raise say a trillion dollars they get that money from the Chinese in the form of bonds.\n\nThe problem is when you have somewhere like Greece who sells a load of bonds one year, then they try to do the same next year but this time investors might ask them \"you're selling a lot of bonds, we need some proof that you'll be able to pay them back in X amount of years\", and Greece goes \"no problem here's the proof\" except that the proof is a forgery and they lied to you. You take them at their word because bonds are a very safe investment so you and your friends keep buying greek bonds and the greek government spends the money on whatever it wants.\n\nIt's now X years later and Greece has spent all the money and you've found out they lied about their ability to pay back the debt they owe you (in the form of a bond), you now have a sovereign debt crisis. So why don't the Greeks just write off the debts? because no one in their right mind would ever buy greek bonds again because there is no confidence that they won't default again and you lose money. So what Greece do is go to the EU and say \"can you bail us out and pay off our debts (bonds) so we can get back on our feet (and issue more bonds)?\".\n\nCan you guess where the EU is getting some of that money from to bail out Greece? Yep, China to the rescue, they'll issue bonds to the Chinese and use the money raised to bail out Greece's bonds.",
"[Ages ago](_URL_0_) I also wondered something very similar. There's a load of good answers in there that might also help you in your quest for knowledge.",
"This particular chart says it shows money owed by debtors \"both government and private.\"\n\nSo if I, an American, borrow $50 from some bank in England, then that counts as $50 owed by America to the UK.\n",
"A lot of reasons. First of all that debt isn't all from one source to the other. It's not \"The United States Government\" owing money to \"The United Kingdom Government.\" There are both a lot of private entities who owe and are owed money, and the government divisions that borrow are divided up, so they each individually might owe so much. Also, the debt might not be in literal correspondence. Britain might owe us, say 100 pounds and we owe them however many dollars that is, but both countries might think it's advantageous to have that debt owed them. They might think the other currency will fall or whatever or they might want interest to collect, but either way as long as one country sees it as not beneficial to pay off the debt at this time they won't do it.",
"All debt is not created equal.\n\nDebt can be held by individuals, corporations, governments, various government institutions... and so on.\n\nDebt can have different terms (years, interest rate, special legal clauses, forgiveness stipulations, etc.).",
"How come Canada, Australia, China and India aren't there?",
"It's probably sovereign debt which is somewhat different to normal debt that you might owe someone. One way a government can raise money (other than taxes) is to issue/sell bonds, anyone can buy these including you if you want to and have the money.\n\nA bond is like a IOU note from the government, you give them money for the bond and in 10 years they'll pay you back with 5% interest. This can be useful if you have lots of spare money lying around as you can invest it in bonds and if the interest is greater than the rate of inflation you don't lose value on your money, also bonds are considered a very safe investment so people don't mind investing in them. Lots of governments like to buy bonds from other countries as an investment and also to win political favour (hyperbole on my part here), so chances are each country US and UK are waiting for their bonds to mature.\n\nSide note, when you hear people talk about China having a ton of US debt they mean sovereign debts, the Chinese government bought trillions of dollars of US bonds from the US treasury and now the US owes China a that money plus a bit on the top. So when the US wants to raise say a trillion dollars they get that money from the Chinese in the form of bonds.\n\nThe problem is when you have somewhere like Greece who sells a load of bonds one year, then they try to do the same next year but this time investors might ask them \"you're selling a lot of bonds, we need some proof that you'll be able to pay them back in X amount of years\", and Greece goes \"no problem here's the proof\" except that the proof is a forgery and they lied to you. You take them at their word because bonds are a very safe investment so you and your friends keep buying greek bonds and the greek government spends the money on whatever it wants.\n\nIt's now X years later and Greece has spent all the money and you've found out they lied about their ability to pay back the debt they owe you (in the form of a bond), you now have a sovereign debt crisis. So why don't the Greeks just write off the debts? because no one in their right mind would ever buy greek bonds again because there is no confidence that they won't default again and you lose money. So what Greece do is go to the EU and say \"can you bail us out and pay off our debts (bonds) so we can get back on our feet (and issue more bonds)?\".\n\nCan you guess where the EU is getting some of that money from to bail out Greece? Yep, China to the rescue, they'll issue bonds to the Chinese and use the money raised to bail out Greece's bonds.",
"[Ages ago](_URL_0_) I also wondered something very similar. There's a load of good answers in there that might also help you in your quest for knowledge."
]
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"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696"
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32mjvb | what happens when you take a nap (like in class or in a car) and you're jolted awake even though no one touched you or tried to scare you? | I just want to nap without getting jolted awake. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32mjvb/eli5_what_happens_when_you_take_a_nap_like_in/ | {
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"There are several reasons for this, some good some bad.\n\nMost commonly, this is reffered to as a [Hypnic Jerk](_URL_0_). These are going to be both good and bad and can be rections of the body trying to get you to stay awake, or be indicators of a much larger and potentially life threatening issue.",
"As /u/Uchihakengura42 said, it could be Hypnic Jerk. However, there is another reason this could happen.\n\nYour body may be warning you of coming danger, often when students woke up in my classroom, it was because people were dancing behind them, or pointing at them. If you're in a car, you may have been overheated, or someone may have walked by and you didn't feel safe. It's what some people refer to as a \"sixth sense\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk"
],
[]
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61mpts | what is the purpose of high end income restricted apartments? | It seems like whenever I apartment hunt, I come across a brand new unit with everything I could hope for: only to see the "income restrictions apply" disclaimer. Meaning you can only make a *maximum* amount to live there. They cost as much as any other apartment, so I don't see what the advantage of this is? In my state they seem to be all the nicest and newest apartments, and with the income restrictions they set I don't see how people could afford them. I'm curious why these seem to be cropping up lately. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61mpts/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_high_end_income/ | {
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"Cities/states want different income brackets in their city. So the local government will give grants to developers to develop for certain income classes. Like it's not just a welfare thing for poor people. \n\nLike a city would say \"we need some middle class people in this city\" but they know property prices are such that if they just build nice middle class apartments that people will just buy them then re-rent them out to rich people, so they just make grants to build buildings that explicitly say \"this is for people of X income, no exceptions for Y years\". \n\nLike they aren't meant to be just low income housing, a city might want a certain amount of middle class, upper middle class and premium housing but not have a market that will naturally support that mix. \n\n\n",
"/u/zeiandren is right in many cases.\n\nDepending on the cuttoff, in some places it can also be used as a form of low income housing. \n\nAs opposed to the \"housing projects\" model. In the 60s-80s the solution to housing everyone was let's have entire buildings that are affordable or subsidized. The results though (along with plenty of other discriminatory and accidental policies) were that concentrated poverty us more likely to be cyclical poverty, and concentrated poverty ends up high crime. So you ended up with geographically concentrated poverty, crime, poor schooling, low job opportunity, divided networking, etc.\n\nSo the \"mixed housing\" movement's idea is that instead of having a projects subsidized and then all the \"nice\" parts of town, you have affordable units mixed throughout the city and use the money in the form of housing voucers to be able to afford the rent.\n\nThen a poor family gets the benefit of housing, but also has access to decent schools, less teauma of high crime, goals that align with those with more power in terms of neighborhood improvement and investment, and better access to peer networks and job opportunities.",
"Where I live this is done through workforce housing. Which is essentially a portion of the apartments available are restricted to a max income like you said. The real reason here that no one knows is this allows developers to decrease the amount of parking necessary to facilitate the building. Zoning code says you must provide 1 parking space per unit but with workforce house the is cut down to 1 parking space per 2 units. \n\nThese allows developers to cut cost on the front end and ultimately make the same amount of money since then rent isn't really that much less. Since land and creating on site parking space is at such a premium this is pretty big and kinda a loophole for developers. \n\nSource: just printing plans for an apartment building of this type. "
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ba9mg9 | why does a space rocket need to travel at 5 miles per second to get to space? | I love space and planets and stars and a very slow attempt at trying to understand it all. The mind boggling figures or light years, solar masses and what not fascinates me.
I was recently reading that a rocket needs a speed of around 5 miles per second to get into "space" at 50-60 miles up give or take.
What I don't understand is a shuttle launches near enough vertical, Travelling at around the speed of a bullet so how could this speed be correct? Surely we wouldn't even be able to see a launch happening at that speed and to reach space it would only take around 10 seconds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ba9mg9/eli5_why_does_a_space_rocket_need_to_travel_at_5/ | {
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"Rockets lean over very rapidly to get the horizontal speed which is known as escape velocity basically at a lower speed the pull of gravity just pulls the craft back to Earth. ",
" > What I don't understand is a shuttle launches near enough vertical, Travelling at around the speed of a bullet so how could this speed be correct?\n\nSpacecraft launch vertically so they can get out of the thick lower atmosphere as fast as possible. The closer to the ground you are, the thicker the atmosphere is. This produces a ton of drag on the spacecraft, making it difficult to reach the speeds required for orbit.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n > Surely we wouldn't even be able to see a launch happening at that speed and to reach space it would only take around 10 seconds?\n\nWell first, nothing accelerates instantaneously. You can watch any video of a rocket launch and see that when it leaves the pad, it's clearly not going very fast at first. That's because it has to accelerate. When you get in a car to drive somewhere, when you put your foot on the accelerator, you car isn't instantly going 60 mph. It takes some seconds to get to that speed. So too with rockets, they have to accelerate. It takes several minutes to get for 0mph on the launch pad to over 17,000 mph in orbit.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSecond, getting into orbit isn't just going straight up. Like I said above, that's just to clear the densest part of the atmosphere. To get into orbit, you have to go *sideways* really fast. Again, watch any rocket launch video and you can see that it doesn't just go straight up, it makes a slow arc from vertical to horizontal. \n\n & #x200B;",
" > a rocket needs a speed of around 5 miles per second to get into \"space\" at 50-60 miles up give or take.\n\nThis is not true, as illustrated by the Virgin Galactic craft that flies up that high with very little speed required. The problem is that, without the speed, you fall straight back down as soon as you stop thrusting upwards. That’s no problem for Virgin Galactic because they’re just taking people up for a brief experience of space. Craft that want to stay up for days need to be in orbit, and that’s what requires the speed. Reaching orbital speed needs close to fifty times more energy than just reaching the altitude of space.",
" > Why does a space rocket need to travel at 5 miles per second to get to space?\n\nYou don't need to travel at 5 miles per second to get to space.\n\nYou need to travel at 5 miles per second to **stay** in space.\n\nThe trick with getting to orbit is that you need to get to a speed where your forward momentum essentially cancels out the acceleration downwards due to gravity. You keep falling forwards, but you're moving forwards fast enough that you keep \"missing\" the Earth. Go too slowly and you'll reenter the atmosphere. Go too quickly and you'll fly off into space. But go at the precise speed and you'll be fine.\n\nThe reason rockets launch facing straight up is entirely because they want to clear the relatively thick air near the surface of the Earth, because that thick air induces a lot of drag. This relates to what \"Max Q\" is (assuming you listen to radio chatter of the space shuttle launches); you actually throttle down the engines in order to ease your way through the period of maximum dynamic pressure (so, maximum stress caused by the air).\n\nEventually, you get high enough that the air starts to thin significantly, at which point you nose the rocket over, throttle up your engines, and haul ass to get you up to the correct altitude *and* the correct speed."
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2dpj0c | how were first dictionaries (en-en / en - any other language written? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dpj0c/eli5_how_were_first_dictionaries_enen_en_any/ | {
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"I don't quite understand what you're asking. What about the process is confusing?",
"People just wrote down a list of words, and next to each one, what the word meant -- or how to say the word in another language.\n\nAs these lists got really long, taking many pages, people started connecting them into the shape of books.",
"Incidentally, one of first people to write an English dictionary was a guy named Samuel Johnson. Unlike with modern dictionaries, his dictionary never failed to make his opinions clear. For example, it defined \"oats\" as \"a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people\" and defined \"opera\" as \"an exotic and irrational entertainment which has always been combated, and always prevailed\"."
]
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