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67ixsr | why is the understanding of nutrition so far behind? | I don't know if "behind" is necessarily the most accurate way of describing it, but the field of Nutrition and Dietetics seems like it can't quite nail anything down beyond basic necessities. Even then, the RDA/%DV seems to change quite a bit.
What is it that makes it so difficult to develop an accurate understanding of how food consumption effects our health? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67ixsr/eli5_why_is_the_understanding_of_nutrition_so_far/ | {
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"Because its complicated. Your body is basically a chemistry set and it doesn't help that everyone's chemistry sets are different.\n\nWhen you eat two eggs and some bacon for breakfast, the effects on your health may be drastically different than how a different person is affected by the same breakfast.\n\nhereditary considerations and previous dietary conditions play such a massive role that making any blanket statements is risky and developing a specialized plan is difficult. ",
"I think it's also important to consider how much power the large food corporations have. They provide research funding to help promote their own products which creates a lot of contradictory/confusing information out there. For example, some people who helped develop the government recommended food guide in Canada had ties to the dairy industry and therefore a vested interest in maximizing how much dairy consumption is suggested. \n\nEdit: spelling",
"aside from vested interests and dogma, it's astoundingly difficult and expensive to perform useful and accurate long term experiments ethically on humans.",
" > What is it that makes it so difficult to develop an accurate understanding of how food consumption effects our health? \n\nOne problem is that the inputs are wildly nonlinear.\n\nSome vitamins can be created within the body. How much is necessary in your diet? Depends...\n\nSome nutrients can be converted (starch, fats, and even proteins - > sugar). How much are needed? Depends.\n\nWe have in fact learned a lot about these nutrients, but the resulting information just doesn't apply itself to a simple answer for \"How many carrots should I eat in a day?\", so ideas like RDA really are only generalized, highly variable \"values\". \n\nAnd in the end, once you meet certain minimal requirements, food consumption tends to affect your health only negatively. You get overweight, risk heart disease, cancer, diabetes... but no one is going to put on a package of Twinkies how many a month will increase your chance of dying (hint: it's between 0 and 2)."
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21f5m3 | how do researchers synthesize elements if we have have yet to recreate atomic fusion. | As I understand, scientists can basically 'create' atoms in a lab setting, mostly done for some of the higher atomic number elements, such as Livermorium or Ununoctium which exist for only a few thousandths of a second. While some of them do exist as decayed versions of higher atomic number atoms, it still doesn't explain how those 'heavier' atoms are created. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21f5m3/eli5_how_do_researchers_synthesize_elements_if_we/ | {
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"We have been about to replicate atomic fusion. It is actually pretty commonplace, just about any college physics lab could do it.\n\nThe catch is, it takes a lot of energy, more energy than the fusion reaction gives off. That is what fusions researchers are after, a fusion reaction that releases more energy than it takes to trigger it.",
"We can create atomic fusion, both at a small scale in many sorts of lab experiments, and at a larger scale in nuclear explosions. It's not particularly difficult, and scientists have been doing it for decades. \n\nWhat we can't reliably do yet is create self-sustaining fusion reactions that create more energy than we put in to start them. We can't use fusion as an energy source yet. "
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1erlhk | the conservative scandal concerning a $90,000 payment to senator mike duffy | Don't know much about politics. Other than a conflict of interest, who are these people and why are they important? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1erlhk/eli5_the_conservative_scandal_concerning_a_90000/ | {
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"It may help to put yourself in Mike Duffy's shoes. You play Mike Duffy, and I will play \"the taxpayer\", i.e. the general population of Canada.\n\nSuppose you live in PEI. I offer you a job in Ottawa. Since your house is so far away, you have to find a place to stay in Ottawa while you work. Since this costs money, I will let you claim your housing expenses since you have to work so far away from your house.\n\nNow, it turns out that since you took the job, you really can't say that you live in PEI anymore, because you never really spend time there. So, I ask you to repay the money that I gave you to cover your housing expenses.\n\nSo, the first problem here is that you were potentially defrauding me out of money by claiming that your primary residence was in PEI and your secondary residence was in Ottawa when in fact it was more likely the other way around.\n\nYou offer to repay the money, but you can't afford it on such short notice, so your friend Nigel offers to lend you the money to pay me back.\n\nHere is where the Conflict of Interest Act comes in. Since you and your friend Nigel work for the government, you are both bound by the Conflict of Interest Act. That act states that you cannot use your position of power in the government to mess with a private person's financial situation (for good or bad).\n\nSo, if Nigel was using his government power to loan you the money to pay me back, then he had a conflict of interest. Now, Nigel claims that he used his own money, which might be true. But the Conflict of Interest Act also specifies limits on the types of gifts that you are allowed to receive, since you are a senator.\n\nIf Nigel lent you his own money, then that could be interpreted as a really big gift, and that would put you in a conflict of interest situation, since you accepted a big gift from somebody.\n\nSo either you are in a conflict of interest situation, or Nigel is. Catch-22.\n\nNow, to make matters worse, Nigel is the Prime Minister's chief of staff, so if he is found to be in a conflict of interest situation, it could reflect badly on the Prime Minister's office. Since the conservative government is all about eliminating corruption in government, this scandal could make them look hypocritical, and thus cost them votes in the future.\n"
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1ph3vx | how does someone, without millions of dollars, start investing? | Is there a website where I can just start buying stocks in single digits or do I have to buy in large quantities? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ph3vx/eli5how_does_someone_without_millions_of_dollars/ | {
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"Making real money in stocks with small numbers is really hard...particularly with taxes that apply to income when you do sell. How much are you looking to invest? What annual profit percentage are you hoping to make?",
"For the average joe who just has a little bit of money they want to see grow, your only smart option is index funds. They typically track the market, or at least a segment of the market, as a whole, and move up and down with it.\n\nHistorically, index funds almost *always* beat out individuals who try to 'time the market' and buy individual stocks and do things manually. \n\nIf the money is for retirement, look into \"target date index funds\". These are index funds which gradually shift in their risk-level as time goes on. When you're young, the fund buys/sells more stocks than any other security. As you get older, it starts to shift more and more into Bonds and other securities that are very low risk (but offer smaller returns). The idea being that as you get closer to retirement, you can't afford to be as risky with your savings.",
"Check out /r/investing for some discussion\n\nHead to _URL_0_, they have a stock simulator there\n\nYou can buy stocks in single digits, but its not always cost effective.\n\nOn average the cost for a buy or a sell market order (e.g. give me the best price in the market) will be between 5 and 10$, sometimes lower, sometimes higher depending on who you choose as your broker.\n\nIf you buy low-priced stocks in the single digits - lets say a 1$ stock - and you buy 10 of those, so 10$ worth of stocks, your actual cost is closer to 15-20$ because of the trade fees. Plus, when you sell again later, the fees are there as well. So for you to make money on your 10$ investment, you have to make enough to cover the 10-20$ in fees, which means your stock has to increase by 100 to 200% over time.\n\nThat doesn't happen as often as people think it does. So you can do single-digit investment, but you'll have a hard time recouping your investment due to fees."
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b53jn3 | why is it that when metals are heated up to a molten state they lose most or all of their magnetic characteristics, but the earths core is molten metal and it is what gives the earth its magnetic field? | A theory I heard about Mars is that its core cooled and thus the planet lost its magnetic field leading to its atmosphere degrading and surface water boiling away. How come this molten metal at the Earths core retains its magnetic properties instead of losing it due to not having a defined north and south pole for the magnetic field to form around? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b53jn3/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_metals_are_heated_up_to/ | {
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"My understanding is that the pressure of the planet pushing in on the molten core is believed to result in the core effectively crystalizing so that it has solid properties",
"Molten metals loose their fixed magnetism because they don't have fixed aligned regions when they're melted, but it's not the only way magnetism occurs. \n\nFrom what I understand the Earth's core kinda acts as a giant dynamo, with the pressure on the inner core making it act as a solid and the convection currents and rotation due to the planets motion in the outer core leading to moving flows, which together create a magnetic field",
"The magnetic field of the Earth is caused by an extremely complex and not fully understood phenomenon called the earth's [geodynamo](_URL_0_). \n\nThe short answer is that the magnetic field is not held in completely the same way as a standard permanent magnet, as the core is far above the Curie Temperature, the temperature at which a metal loses the ability to be a permanent magnet, rather it is actively generated by the rotation of the Earth spinning a electrically conductive fluid. \n\nHeat from the inner iron solid core of the earth drives convection currents in the liquid iron outer core which, combined with the rotation of the earth bending these flows into cylindrical patterns, induce electric currents in the molten iron which in turn produce the magnetic field of the earth. The dynamo phenomenon is extremely complex beyond ELI5 levels, but it the leading theory for where the magnetic fields of stars and planets comes from.\n\nTLDR: The Earth's core is a heat and rotation powered electromagnet",
"They're two completely different mechanisms. A permanent magnet has field lines solidified to a particular shape. In a planet, the field is generated dynamically by flow. If it stopped, the field would disappear.\n\nThe fluid doesn't have to be molten metal: on Uranus, the fluid that generates the planetary magnetic field is a condensed water-ammonia mix.",
"what determines whether a planet has an atmosphere or not? is it the presence of a magnetic field or something else?",
"Sorry if someone already said this but I haven’t seen it it top comments: earth’s core is not molten metal but solid mainly iron and nickel. "
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2hv50e | why it is so common for people to misunderstand freedom of speech? | Why do people cry freedom of speech everytime their views are criticised or censored for being offensive?
As far as I know, the ONLY thing Freedom of Speech means is that the government can't arrest you for what you say, and that even THAT freedom has restrictions on the time and place (FIRE in a crowded theater, for a classic example)
So why do so many people cry violation of freedom of speech when they are banned from their favourite pub for spewing racism while drinking? Or when they are banned from a community?
I guess what I'm looking to have explained is why this is such a common misconception, and how it can come about? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hv50e/eli5_why_it_is_so_common_for_people_to/ | {
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"Because playing the victim card is an easy way to shut down potential criticism. Disingenuous, sure, but often effective.",
"Because legal enforcement is only one way of looking at something like freedom of speech.\n\nRegardless of what the law says and how it is applied, people are justified in feeling that it represents a principle which may extend well beyond specific legal protection. The 'freedom of speech' is in many ways one of these principles. It suggests that society should tolerate conversations about the concerns of all, including minority concerns which others might find distasteful.\n\nWhile the examples you give I think are easier to justify ethically, remember that there was a time when one could be shunned by private organizations by suggesting that blacks or women deserved the vote, but social protections of speech freedoms, as inconsistent as they might be, were helpful in allowing for conversations which helped improve freedoms for more people.\n\nAn example would be employment protection for those who speak outside of work. While courts have not found such a protection in existing federal laws, several other jurisdictions have chosen to protect employment when an employer might take action against someone for speech off the clock. This legislation is following a wide-spread feeling that employers have significant power of employees and shouldn't be able to exercise that in order to control their political activity.\n\nGenerally, however, many people have only vague understandings of the lines between social convention and legal protection and particularly the limits of the legal applicability of principles outlined in documents such as the USA's constitution. Many of these people understand that there is a principle here and that there is some legal aspect to it, but don't really understand the limits of how it has been applied.",
"I'm always reminding people that freedom of speech has always had limitations and has never been an absolute right. I don't know why people have to be such freedom of speech extremists. In all things moderation!\n\nWhen I debate with right wing groups in the UK I frequently encounter an idea that freedom of speech is actually freedom to not be proved wrong. Debates will reach a point when I'm accused of trying to censor an idea when in fact all I'm doing is showing it's stupidity.",
"There is a difference between freedom of speech itself and the actual laws that uphold it. Being banned out of pub *is* restriction of their freedom of speech, but a legal one. People assume the law grants them absolute freedom of speech, which is not the case, but actually reading laws is such a bore. In fact, people tend to have most bizarre ideas about the laws of the countries they live in and their own rights.",
"Because most people don't understand the Constitution at all.\n\nIf you stop the average US citizen on the street and ask them the purpose of the Constitution, most people will tell you that it is the document that grants us our rights. This is the exact opposite of what the Constitution actually does.\n\nThe founding principles of the US–from which the Constitution derives–are very clear that no document or institution may grant rights to people; all people are born with all of their natural rights. What the Constitution can do is strategically *infringe* our natural-born rights in order to grant certain rights and powers to government. The Bill of Rights, including the freedom of speech, is about drawing a bright line around some of your natural born rights to make absolutely clear they cannot be trespassed upon in all this strategic infringement of rights-granting to government.\n\nSo this is the fundamental misunderstanding. People who misunderstand the origin of their rights feel that if they are given rights by the government, those rights ought to have force everywhere regardless of the context. In fact this is completely wrong; the Constitution is about enumerating the powers granted to government, and therefore the Bill of Rights is about limiting those governmental powers when applied to citizens.\n\nIn short, the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights protect those rights in the context of powers granted to government only. All of these protections have to do with government exercising these powers when prosecuting crimes. This has nothing to do with how private entities' rights interact when dealing with each other...that's a matter for civil (tort) law."
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2d22ca | why can't we stop the brain from thinking? | Whenever we're within our conscious mind, we can't create silence within our head because of all the thoughts occurring. Why is this?
Edit: I mean while still seeing and hearing outside stimuli, the voice in your head isn't saying anything/making any noise.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d22ca/eli5_why_cant_we_stop_the_brain_from_thinking/ | {
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"A light bulb can't shine darkness. A speaker can't emit silence.\n\nYour brain's purpose is to think. The only way to think about nothing at all is to switch it off, and that would have disastrous consequences for your life span.\n\nMeditation is distraction. You think about repetitive mantra or serenity and reduce your anxiety, but you're still thinking even while doing that.\n\nIf you want to control the 'noise' try to focus on something soothing. That's essentially what meditation does for you. It's not thinking about nothing, it's thinking about **something else** to the exclusion of all the annoying noise."
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9dujx1 | when someone is photoshopped out of a picture how do they place a background behind them where they were? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dujx1/eli5_when_someone_is_photoshopped_out_of_a/ | {
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"You cut a piece of background from the picture and paste it over them. Depending on the background, more or less difficulty is required to eliminate seams.",
"There are 2 ways to do this:\n\nUse the clone tool in Photoshop to select the area right next to the person and replace them with that part of the background.\n\nTake a picture, wait for the person to move, then take another picture. Layer the pictures in Photoshop, then use a mask to hide the person in one image and let the empty background from the other one show through.",
"In a professional shoot, the photographer will often shoot a “plate” of the background with no people in it at all, so that people can be photoshopped out of shots if needed later."
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2smcmw | why would females want to follow the religion of islam when there are clear preachings about them being worth less than a man? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2smcmw/eli5_why_would_females_want_to_follow_the/ | {
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"So does the Bible?\nIn fact all Religions basically do, except I believe Pagan (Norse, Wiccan, Druidism etc) and Buddhist.\n\n",
"Almost all religions treat women worse than men. Islam, Christianity, Judiasm, Buddhism, Hinduism... all essentially identical when it comes to women as far as the respective holy books are concerned. Of course, people pick and choose what parts of the book stop follow and only the more extreme or fundamental follow the oppression aspects of their books.\n\nBut now I've gone off topic.\n\nWhy do women want to follow Islamic religions? The same reason why anyone wants to follow any religions; it gives them comfort. Everyone has something different that comforts them, and maybe they see something they want in Islamic religions.\n\nOh, and if you weren't talking about those who convert; almost everyone who is religious is the same religion as their parents. Converts are rare. This is just how it works.",
"It's rather difficult for a female to reason with her parents about the choices of religion she has as a new born child.",
"You also seem to be assuming that these women have a choice, which practically isn't always the case in many scenarios, particularly in the most repressive regimes.",
"Because they believe in that religion. If they believe that Allah is real and that what they are told is his will then they will do it because they believe that Allah is right. ",
"Because you don't choose your religion for the most part. It's usually whatever your parents religion is. When you've been brought up with it from birth that's just the way it is.",
"All the reasons given for women born to Islamic parents in Islamic countries are sensible. What always amaze me are those Western women who have grown up in modern secular societies and convert to Islam as adults. This I find hard to understand. ",
"Okay, so I was raised Muslim. I do not believe in or practice the faith, but I grew up with it. My parents are still devout Muslims, so I have some feelings about this and have spoken about it with my Mum. \n\nSpecifically this conversation was sparked up when she told me she was moving to Saudi Arabia to take a job there. My knee jerk response was \"Mum, why? They treat women like second class citizens , you can't drive there.\" \n\nNow I'm not sure of much about how they treat women besides that, but I don't think it's good. She responded interestingly, and told me that despite that fact, they \"take good care\" of women there. After all, they found her a place to live. \n\nThe debate extended onto Islam and how women are seen as being lesser, although she didn't seem to agree with that (she knows better than I do, being a scholar of this kind of thing). But I mentioned that it is specifically cited that women can't be leaders because their judgement is clouded by the fact that they were made from Adam's rib (not verbatim, but I think the sentiment holds.) \n\nHer response held a similar sentiment to the previous one. Despite the idea that they're treated as slightly lesser, Islam encourages protection of women - the hijab for example, is an archaic tradition that some people choose to continue to adhere to. It was apparently in stated by the Prophet Mohammed in a social climate when women were very frequently raped - specifically to defend them from that. \n\nWe haven't spoken about what it's like for women there since, but she seems happy, so I guess it can't be that bad. \n\nNow like I said, my mother is a very devout Muslim so maybe she has some bias, but I thought her perspective was interesting, so I thought I might recount it. :) \n\nI hope that helps. ",
"A lot of it is inertia. It's hard to overcome a \"default\" state, and for many people born into Islam, that's what they defend to the death.",
"I will give an answer that is not religious.\n\nIt is because of tradition and a kind of stocholm syndrome situation. It is the same reason why most child beaters were beaten children in the first place, why child abusers were abused themselves, why women are the biggest sexual mutilation advocates.\n\nWhen you get oppressed at some point in life, the most natural reaction is to look for protection, even from the people who are abusing you (beaten espouses trying to cover the abuser). Religion is a way to find some protection for your mind and also to accept your situation, making it bearable in day to day.\n\nThe other is that abused become abusers. They complete a full circle, either based on group dynamics (We *all* did it!) or by jealousy (I suffered from X, there is no reason this person could get away from X). This makes women push the most disgusting traditions from their community down to their kids. This happens everywhere, even in occident (think circumcision for boys)."
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652kkl | how do shaped explosives work? | You've probably seen them in a video game or something of the sort. How does a shaped explosive work, as in how is the explosion directed in one direction, rather than all around it?
CONTEXT: I'm playing a Gunslinger in a Dungeons and Dragons game, who's trying to invent shaped explosives. Done some of the research, but I'm still confused be HOW they shape the explosion, hoping ELI5 will help me :D
EDIT: I have no idea if this belongs in the Physics or Engineering category. If I've got it in the wrong one, let me know, I'll change it.
EDIT 2: I've learned so much from these answers, thank you everyone ♥ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/652kkl/eli5_how_do_shaped_explosives_work/ | {
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6n8yo2 | if programming is mainly a bunch of math and numbers then how is a video game created? | I have learned some programming in the past but I cannot figure out how you build a game from it. You need some graphics and sounds for it too (which are tasks for graphics designers and sound engineers) , but I don't know how do you integrate that in your programming (math/ numbers) and in the final product, the game itself.
How is it all mixed together to provide what we finally can play?
If you know the answer, please write down the original names of what you are describing (like assets) even if you explain what it is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n8yo2/eli5_if_programming_is_mainly_a_bunch_of_math_and/ | {
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"you know how an image is described just by numbers in a specific order given by the image file format?\n\nthe same thing can be done to 3d objects instead of 2d plains. a program can then dictate how this image/object description has to change on specific actions.\n\nif you use a graphic engine, all this is made much more simple in a way that the programer don't has to do it himself but only feeds the interface to the engine.",
"So programming isn't really \"a bunch of math and numbers\". A better way to describe it is \"a bunch of instructions and decisions\". Math and numbers are used, but programming at it's core is telling the computer to do certain things, and making decisions.\n\nSo let's look at the simplest example of a real computer game. [Pong](_URL_0_).\n\nYou need a few things for pong.\n\n* the \"paddles\" to draw\n* the \"ball\" to draw\n* Numbers to write, for the score\n* The logic to make it work.\n\nSo if you were making this game, normally what you'd do is do something called a \"game loop\". A game loop is a way to designing a game where the same chunks of code are ran over and over again. This code at the simplest might be set up like this, written in C#, a programming language:\n\n void GameLoop()\n {\n while (gameRunning)\n {\n GetUserInput();\n UpdateEverything();\n DrawEverything();\n }\n }\n\nWhat this is saying is, when you run GameLoop() get the user's input, update everything, and then draw everything. If \"gameRunning\" turns out to be false, get out of there (and the game will end).\n\nSo what do those steps do?\n\n\n void GetUserInput()\n {\n KeysPressed = GetPressedKeys();\n if (KeysPressed.Contains(Key.W))\n {\n Player1.Position.Y = Player1.Position.Y - 1\n }\n else if (KeysPressed.Contains(Key.S))\n {\n Player1.Position.Y = Player1.Position.Y + 1\n }\n if (KeysPressed.Contains(Key.Up))\n {\n Player2.Position.Y = Player2.Position.Y - 1\n }\n else if (KeysPressed.Contains(Key.Down))\n {\n Player2.Position.Y = Player2.Position.Y + 1\n }\n if (KeysPressed.Contains(Key.Esc))\n {\n gameRunning = false;\n }\n }\n\nThis says, first, find out what keys are pressed (I won't cover how this is done, but imagine what ends up here is a list of what keys are pressed right now). Now, take that list, and if it contains the 'W' key, chang the position of the first player on the vertical axis (Y axis) and decrease it. Since the top of the screen is always zero, this says move Player1 up. If you press S, move player 1 down. If you press the up arrow, move player 2 up, if you press the down arrow, move player 2 down.\n\nIf you hit Esc, the game will quit when it starts the next frame\n\n void UpdateEverything()\n {\n HandleBallBouncingOffWalls()\n HandleBallBouncingOffPaddles()\n if (Ball.MovingUp)\n {\n Ball.Position.Y = Bally.Position.Y - 1;\n }\n else {\n Ball.Position.Y = Bally.Position.Y + 1;\n }\n if (Ball.MovingLeft)\n {\n Ball.Position.X = Bally.Position.X - 1;\n }\n else {\n Ball.Position.X = Bally.Position.X + 1;\n }\n\n if (Ball.X < 0)\n {\n Player2.Score = Player2.Score + 1;\n Ball.X = Screen.Width / 2\n Ball.Y = Screen.Height / 2\n }\n if (Ball.X > Screen.Width)\n {\n Player1.Score = Player1.Score + 1;\n Ball.X = Screen.Width / 2\n Ball.Y = Screen.Height / 2\n }\n }\n\nFirst, we have to HandleBallBouncingOffWalls, which is a separate bit of code (a method) which determines if the ball hit the top or bottom wall, and changes its vertical direction. I won't cover that here right now. The same thing is done with HandleBallBouncingOffPaddles, but for horizontal movement. Next we use that movement, if the ball is moving up, we change it's position upwards (same as before), otherwise we move it down. If the ball is moving left we shift it left, otherwise right.\n\nFinally we need to determine if a player scored. We do this by figuring out if the ball crossed the left or the right edges of the screen. If so we put it back in the middle of the screen.\n\nThe key here is that **nothing has actually changed on the screen**. All we did is changed the values we have stored for our objects. The screen is still showing what we drew last time through (the previous \"frame\"). Now we draw stuff.\n\n void DrawEverything()\n {\n DrawRectangle(Player1.Position.X - Player1.Width / 2, Player1.Position.Y - Player1.Height / 2, Player1.Width, Player1.Height, Color.Red);\n DrawRectangle(Player2.Position.X - Player2.Width / 2, Player2.Position.Y - Player2.Height / 2, Player2.Width, Player2.Height, Color.Blue);\n DrawRectangle(Ball.Position.X - Ball.Width / 2, Ball.Position.Y - Ball.Height / 2, Ball.Width, Ball.Height, Color.White);\n\n DrawText(Player1.Score, 0, 0)\n DrawText(Player2.Score, 400,0)\n }\n\nThe first three lines are basically the same, they say, first, find the top left corner of this thing (it's center X, minus half it's width, and it's center Y, minus half it's height), and make a rectangle from that point down and to the right. That rectangle will have a width of the size of the object, and a height of the size of the object. We'll also tell it what color to draw.\n\nThe actual DrawRectangle call is normally something very easy to do in a programming language, but I won't cover it here.\n\nDrawText will write out text on the screen, I also won't cover how it works. But in this case we just pass it the text we want to write (the score), and the x and y positions we want to write it.\n\n\nNow there are MANY things that are glossed over here. But this is **generally** how a very simple game would function. Finishing this up and making a working game would take 10 minutes or so, even if it would have flaws.\n\nLet me know if you have any questions or want me to follow up on anything in particular.\n\nSpecially I glossed over:\n\n* Creating the objects (initialization)\n* Reading the keys\n* Collisions detection (walls/paddles) and response\n* Actually Drawing shapes/text\n\nPONG!",
"It might be easiest to learn by making a simple example game yourself. Check out the [Unity tutorials](_URL_0_) and give roll-a-ball or the UFO tutorial a try. ",
"Yes, programming is just numbers and how you arrange the data. However the data you are giving to the computer can be interpreted in a way that, to us humans, looks like a videogame.\n\nProgramming a video game has to with \"telling the computer what to do\".\n\nYou know that computers work with Strings and numbers. However some programs(game engines, virtual machines) or libraries can tell the computer things like \"draw this image here\" or \"take a photo of this Super Mario level and display on the monitor\"\n\nVideo game creators work with that. They don't code the game only using Python / Java / C++ /anything. They use those libraries that the Computer recognizes as a specific function for video games.\n\nYou can try to use PyGame (python), SLD / allegro (C++) or LWJGL(Java) yourself and try to come up with anything. Or you can use advanced programs like Unreal Engine.\n\nThe important is that Computers are already shipped with some codes that allow them to draw on screen / create 3d stuff, etc. Then you just use a library on any program (or direct access via C++) to create a Window where you draw things/people/cars, etc. and develop your game.",
"Former game developer here,\n\nThe math you want to learn is Linear Algebra.\n\nA \"vector\" indicates a point, or direction and magnitude. For video games, it'll typically have 2-4 components of X, Y, Z, and W, in that order. Vectors have lots of ambiguous names, because programmers tend to overload and abuse the terms. Mostly the name is specific to the context. The same data structure tends to be used to represent a point or a direction and magnitude. If your language has strong typing, you can make multiple types with essentially the same properties, but then you would have to be particularly mindful of when you can and can't mix types to keep your math correct.\n\nA \"matrix\", in essence, describes the different planes of your vector space and how they relate to one another. They typically have 2, 3, or 4 component vectors of the same names as above, for video game purposes. These literally describe the shape of a space, a universe if you will, and every model in your game will have one. So every joint of your player model, for example, and they'll be stored in a hierarchy. These things describe rotation, translation, scale, and various skews.\n\nSo every model exists in \"model space\" - a modeler will make, say, the hand of your player in an editor, and it will be centered about the origin (coordinates 0, 0, 0) of 3D space in the editor. You then have a hierarchy of the player character body parts, the torso tends to be the root, and then you have the shoulder, the forearm, and finally the hand. Each element in the hierarchy has it's own matrix, so you multiply the hand matrix against the torso, the upper arm, and the forearm matrix to finally get it rotated and translated into place. You always multiply down the hierarchy, so if the player character moves or rotates, that root matrix, of the torso, gets changed, then all children matrices all have to be updated as well. The root of any model hierarchy will be a leaf relative to some other hierarchy, say a room, a building, a map quadrant, ultimately to the world origin. Now your model is in \"world space\".\n\nThere's one final matrix to multiply against, and that's the camera. The camera is mostly just a matrix, but the numbers represent a \"projection\". Like I said, a matrix describes the planes of space and how they relate to one another. What you can do is collapse the Z axis and bend the X and Y axes so you get a \"perspective\", where things further away look smaller, and everything converged on the horizon. This is how we go from 3D space to 2D space. The rest of the camera is a frustum, a 3D shape of a pyramid with the point on the top chopped off. This is for culling - anything outside the frustum isn't in view, either too far off to the sides or too far away.\n\nThis camera is essentially just a matrix, and all this work is to take all the 3D points of the model and multiply them against this matrix, going UP the hierarchy, so we know how each point projects onto a 2D space that is your screen. These points are then mapped to pixel coordinates. After that, there are \"space filling algorithms\" to take points and make triangles by coloring pixels within the edges that form the triangles.\n\nBut typically we don't even do that. Textures use a UV coordinate system (a separate 2D vector space) that maps a texture to a models surface. Add some LA math, and you can map texture coordinates onto the screen.\n\nLA is just math, it's not like it's specific to video games - it's used in physics and anywhere a system of linear equations make sense. Google Pagerank? LA, it's just a big matrix, though it doesn't represent 3D space. So you can get mired in the abstract principles of LA if you want, and you'll be better for it, or you can study LA specifically in the context of video games, and that should get you going.\n\nCheck out _URL_0_ and Gamasutra for great sources and tutorials. There's also a gamedev sub to look into. Game engines take care of a lot of this for you, whether it's a 2D game or 3D, this is how they all do it.\n\nAs for assets, 3D model programs have these gigantic project files. Games don't use these files, they contain shit like the editor's undo stack. Useless to us. Those models are exported into file formats that really break the data down to it's most basic components, a list of all the points, a list of sets of 3 indexes into the list of points to describe the triangles, file paths to the texture files, and UV coordinates. If it's a composite model, it'll have some matrices in there, too, and if you get really fancy, maybe game specific stuff like animation sequences. Some of these formats are text, some are binary, some are open sourced and generic, some are proprietary, some are merely specific to a particular game engine, like Unity. If you want to write out and read in Unity files for your game, kudos to you, but you don't have to. Some editors come bundled with exporters for well known formats and engines, some engines come bundled with exporters for well known editors.\n\nTextures are always in a lossless format, so BMP or PNG, for example, and never JPG. Disk space is cheap.",
"You use numbers to represent things. Let's say we are using a graphics library that has the built in function setScreenColor(int red, int green, int blue) \n\nEach parameter would use an integer to represent how much of each color should be displayed. \n\nThe function would have code that accesses your graphics card to pass those value through and then it would show up on your screen. ",
"If you'd like a detailed step-by-step, go on the YouTubes and search for [Handmade Hero](_URL_0_) and watch Casey Muratori (he of Jonathan Blow's The Witness fame, or, literally thousands of game as his code has been used in every fucking thing ever) develop a game FROM scratch.\n\nIn fact, his first few episodes are just him setting up his dev environment the way he likes to work.\n\nLast I checked, he was well into in the upper 300's in episodes into creating his game. When I first started watching, and when he hit episode 100 or so, I thought to myself, damn, he's about done, he has the basic framework done.\n\nWell, those first 100 were just a tease to the real work that goes into making a game. I don't have a huge interest in programming, but, it's an interesting and fascinating process to watch. Casey is a fantastic presenter and does a great job of explaining what he is doing and why he is doing it.\n \nAlong with his stream, you can buy a copy of the game for 15.00, and you get every bit of source code that has been written on the game. Every new episode starts off with using the code from the last, and you are encouraged to program along with Casey, make improvements, make additions, whatever."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong"
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"https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials"
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[],
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"gamedev.net"
],
[],
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"https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive"
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3zi3l9 | why can a person be paid for donating plasma, eggs, or sperm, but not for blood or other organs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zi3l9/eli5_why_can_a_person_be_paid_for_donating_plasma/ | {
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"Unlike sperm and eggs, blood and organs can be easily acquired from non-alive people, so incentivizing the process of making strangers non-alive in order to profit from their blood and organs is not a good idea. ",
"You CAN sell blood. There are places that buy blood all over the place. However, they find that people who donate blood give higher quality blood than people who sell their blood. By higher quality, I mean fewer issues with medications and drugs in the blood, healthier people overall, etc. The reason is that there are plenty of people who are willing to give their blood away for free. It's a feel-good activity and there are organizations in place who work to attract donors. If there weren't lots of people willing to donate blood, then blood would sell for a lot. In fact, hospitals charge a large amount for the blood that people donate for free. \n\nAs for organs--it's illegal in the US to sell organs. However, there is now a flourishing black market in organs outside of the US. Since donating organs has a lot of health risks associated with it, you really get only two groups of people who willingly give their organs to others: people giving organs to those they love, and people who are desperately poor and are willing to give up their long-term health and life-expectancy in exchange for short term funds. As for black market organ sales, they tend to buy organs from these desperately poor people while misrepresenting the risks, or they force people to give up their organs with threats. \n\nEgg donation also represents a gray area. They're not ostensibly *buying* eggs, they're giving money to compensate for the inconveniences associated with the donation. Same with sperm donation, though the amount paid is much less. These donations get a lot more than blood sales, though, because there is basically no one who will donate for free, and people care a great deal about who the eggs and sperm come from, so are willing to contribute more for the \"donor\". "
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1sx662 | why do a lot of smokers have a mentality that there cigarette butts aren't litter? | mostly curious as the ones I see do it don't seem to even consider it, and at my school it makes up about 85% of the litter I see.
edit: I'm sorry I wrote there and not their. it is rather late -_- | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sx662/eli5_why_do_a_lot_of_smokers_have_a_mentality/ | {
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"Convenience, apathy, self-centered oblivion... I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons. I get extremely annoyed when I see the ground near a public ash tray littered with butts. Yet for the brief time I was a smoker I was guilty of tossing mine wherever. Same thing seems to happen with various road-rage instances. Someone cuts me off in traffic I get annoyed if they don't at least speed up... But if I'm the one doing the cutting I get annoyed that the person was \"speeding\". "
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2l58e2 | comcast, to a non-american. | Everyone seems to be having problems with this company. What exactly gives them such bad reputation and then why people still use it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l58e2/eli5_comcast_to_a_nonamerican/ | {
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"Okay. You only have one real option for cable/telephone/internet provider as mentioned already. Now you order the product and you get a message saying something like this \" We are glad you have chosen Comcast, we will arrive at your house between the hours of 8am and 8pm on either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.\"\n\n\nYou cancel work for the week and wake up early every day of the week waiting for them to come. by Friday at 8pm you give them a call and they don't answer. So you go to work the following Monday. Half way through the work day you get a call saying that you are not home and that now you have an extra fee to pay. You call them back and arrange for the installation in a few hours. You blow off you your afternoon meeting and rush home. They come 2 hours after the time agreed upon and install the equipment. \n\n\n\nEverything is good. \"ahh, I can watch TV now as i already took the rest of the day off work\".... Half way through your show your tv does weird shit and you no longer have cable. \"Simple, I'll phone up Comcast and they will zip over and fix it, I mean they must've done something wrong, I've only just had it installed a few hours ago\" You phone Comcast and they say they will send someone over.\n\n\n\nFive hours later they show up and spend a few minutes doing the same shit you spent the last 5 hours doing. Then they say something like \"blah blah blah the problem is you need to upgrade to model X for 300$ more\" You say you don't want the upgrade and that you just want it fixed. They do some more stuff and fix it. Then they bill you for their incompetence and when you dispute the bill they just spin it to be your problem not theirs.\n\n\n\n\nSo you had your Cable fixed. \"ahh, Now I can relax and catch the new episode of X \" ... you start watching and your cable fails again. You phone up Comcast and they say they will send someone over in the morning. Well with this appointment sorted out you go to hop on the internet to see what is up with this Comcast ordeal... only now your internet also supplied by Comcast is down. Rinse and repeat till you drop Comcast. I hope this helps clear things up a little. just imagine way more waiting, and way more fees for issues Comcast created. "
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2a1bas | how did the first egyptian pharaoh convince people he was divine? | Wouldn't everyone else have been like, "yeah, sure buddy." and gone about their daily business, ignoring the crazy person? How did they convince an entire civilization that they were divine incarnations with supreme power? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a1bas/eli5_how_did_the_first_egyptian_pharaoh_convince/ | {
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"incorporation of observably annual phenomena into rituals and stories. Also a general lack of education helped. ",
"Step 1: Become gang leader \n\nStep 2: Make gang large enough to become army\n\nStep 3: Make army force your crazy story on everyone by threat of death \n\nBasically the same way things happened in North Korea, only without the communism part. ",
"He didn't convince them he was a god and then become their ruler, once he had absolute power he said he was a god. Anyone who said otherwise could be killed horribly. Eventually people believed it.",
"And how in Christian Catholic Church, since 19th century, all decisions made by pope down to bishops are viewed as law since the Good speaks through them ? ( _URL_0_ )",
"The first pharaoh was an alien gray with an IQ of 2000 (average human IQ=100), and had telepathic and other \"powers\". To an uneducated human, he may as well have been God, especially since he was seen descending from the sky in a very bright UFO. You'll note that if you type into google images \"pharaoh cone head\", you'll see they had very large brains/heads (like the alien grays we know today) which is also why all pharaoh's wore elaborate head coverings. \n\nPS. Don't believe everything you hear on the Internet."
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7ac6mx | what makes rejection cause the brain to desire a person more? in what ways can you combat this responsive behavior? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ac6mx/eli5_what_makes_rejection_cause_the_brain_to/ | {
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"It may help to be conscious of the fact that the brain is not a passive recipient of emotion. In fact, the brain doesn’t react to stimuli based on emotion at all, it is in a mode of constant prediction and then compares its prediction to the stimuli and adjusts or filters from there. It’s powerful to know that the brain is actively creating emotion on the go, and that this creation of emotion is largely influenced by affect, the bodies general sense of being. If you are interested in understanding the contemporary science behind emotion development I highly recommend “How emotions are made” by Lisa Barrett"
]
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e34u5a | why do some lights glow after being turned off? |
Sometimes when you turn a light off it glows quite dimly, but it only happens with some lights, can anyone explain why this is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e34u5a/eli5_why_do_some_lights_glow_after_being_turned/ | {
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"Modern lightbumbs are no generating light by heating, they use another, more efficient physical processes which will emit light that is not visible (UV light)\n\nInside the light bulb is a powder made of a special material called non newtonien crystals, which will emit visible light if they receive UV light.\n\nThis process is not instant, as the crystal will still keep glowing if the light is turned off, sometimes for several seconds, more if you have good eyes adapted to the obscurités",
"There are multiple reasons. Many lights have capacitors in them that store a charge. Once it's turned off that charge will slowly discharge through the electronics resulting in it being lit dimly for a while.\n\nGood quality lights should have a resistor in the circuit that will quickly drain this charge so it goes out immediately.\n\nAnother way is that sometimes the current through the wiring induces a slight current in nearby wires. This can be enough to slightly power lights even when the switch is off.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnother reason is that some lights like fluorescent bulbs, use phospors, a chemical that absorbs UV and then re emits it as visible light. These phosphors slowly discharge that light once the UV light is turned off. It's basically the same process as glow in the dark materials, but not as strong."
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fq7u31 | how is memory saved? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fq7u31/eli5_how_is_memory_saved/ | {
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"The unsatisfying answer is that even neurobiologists don't have a great answer to this question. We know that memories are associated with physical changes, but so are pretty much all non-memory developmental changes. There are some ways in which we think we understand how those changes function, but there are more ways that we don't. \n\nAs for \"what are those physical changes?\" Well, you can spend a semester in med school getting an overview if you really want to know. :)\n\nEpisodic memory, which seems to be the type you're thinking of, is the least well understood. Are the changes in another brain similar? Only loosely. The way my brain stores a memory of you *telling me* about the time you went cliff diving is pretty different than how my brain would store a memory of me cliff diving. Though if you're interested in the grey zone in between, read up on [mirror neurons.](_URL_0_)",
"Long term memories do, in fact, cause physical changes. Neurons make new physical connections. \n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a good article on the very question you asked",
"There are a few different questions you're asking here, but I'll try to tackle all of them\n\n > When a memory is formed, is there a physical change to the brain that happens?\n\nThe brain is made up of a very complex interconnected network of neurons. Essentially what you are asking is whether or not the strength of this network can be modulated by experience, and the answer is of course. The strength of neuronal connections change constantly, both in the short and long term as you experience different things. So yes, there is a physical change in the brain. Neurons express more receptors and connections become strengthened in various ways. I won't go into them here, but if you care I'm happy to help"
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"https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/16/what-happens-in-your-brain-when-you-make-a-memory"
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1kzqz3 | how am i able to sing along to a song and write/type coherently at the same time? | I was singing along to an album the other day (am actually doing so now as I type this) and found that I was able to keep typing coherent sentences or responses to instant messages while simultaneously singing along to the song currently playing.
I can also comprehend what I read while singing as well. Are these functions in separate hemispheres of the brain? Am I going off muscle memory for the lyrics while my brain establishes coherency of text? Am I a superhero? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kzqz3/eli5_how_am_i_able_to_sing_along_to_a_song_and/ | {
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"Understanding other people's language or planning what you're going to say primarily happens in a section of brain known as Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere, and as you surmised song is processed in the right hemisphere. Damage to Wernicke's area can cause what's known as [receptive aphasia](_URL_0_), where people can perform the mechanics of speech but are unable to understand what they or others are saying. Sufferers often retain the ability to sing and understand songs, and this is used in some therapies. "
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40ejwr | why does a humidifier (water vapor) keep my skin from getting dry while simply splashing water on my skin does not? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40ejwr/eli5_why_does_a_humidifier_water_vapor_keep_my/ | {
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"Your skin gets dry because it loses water to the air. Unless you keep your skin constantly wet, it will lose water to the dry air. A humidifier makes the air more moist, which makes it harder for your skin to lose water to it."
]
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1l74u6 | the relationship between food consumption/digestion, caloric value and time. | I have always been curious about this, and did not find anything on a search of the subreddit. I am mainly interested in:
-How long it takes for the body to absorb the calories of any given food (on average)?
-Should people pay as close of attention to food labels they are reading, when their body is only receiving a portion of the total calories?
Thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l74u6/eli5_the_relationship_between_food/ | {
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"To absorb almost calories in a food? 1hour to 16 hours. Very rough estimate. You see different food is digested different. A piece of white bread will quickly get broken down in the stomach, move on to the small intestine and get broken down to sugars and enter the bloodstream. A piece of meat can get processed for hours in the stomach and then sit in the small intestine for half a day before it's done. There's also big differences from person to person, and other things that can speed up the process. \n\nCalories on labels are technically incorrect. They basically burn the food and measure how much energy the food is converted to. The body is quite not that efficient, in some cases the difference can be pretty big. However recommendations on how much you should eat is largely based on the labels being correct so it's not a big problem for most people."
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3wy0vq | all politics aside, why did the obama administration trade 5 taliban fighters for an american soldier who is now facing life imprisonment for desertion? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wy0vq/eli5_all_politics_aside_why_did_the_obama/ | {
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"We, as Americans, feel the rights of all Americans, even those accused of crimes trump the holding of foriegn combatants. We would much rather being him home for trial than leave him in some foriegn shithole where he would most likely die under horrific conditions. ",
"Because he's a US soldier. First, that means \"innocent until proven guilty\". Second, regardless of what he's accused of, we cannot let the Taliban become our surrogate justice system. Bergdahl is now in US custody facing a court martial, where he will be judged and, if called for, punished as a US soldier ought to be. Leaving him in enemy hands is simply never an option.",
"They weren't traded. The prisoners were transferred to a prison in Turkey. They not free men.\n",
"Everyone has a right to due process. To say \"he deserted, he deserved it\" would violate his right to due process.\n\nNot to mention what a message like that could do to morale. Reminder, he's not guilty yet. They could find him innocent but you can't do that unless you have him to face trial."
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4im9s7 | what are the factors which make up second world nations, and how are they prevented from becoming 1st or 3rd world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4im9s7/eli5_what_are_the_factors_which_make_up_second/ | {
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"3rd world is an archaic term that has no real meaning when describing countries today. \n\n\"3rd world\" was originally coined to describe countries that didnt ally themselves with the capitalist West (1st world) and the Soviet bloc (2nd world) and were forming their own path (3rd world). it usually described countries like india and places in africa that faced dire poverty, so it became synonymous with extremely poor countries, which was most of the world outside of Europe and North America until about 30 years ago.\n\nthe term changed to \"developed countries\" vs. \"developing countries\", but as those countries started to grow the gap began to shrink, and the term \"more developed countries\" (the west) and \"less developed countries\" became in vogue. \n\nnow, many of the urban centers in those \"LDC\"s are indistinguishable from urban centers in the traditional economic powers, but they tend to have either pockets of development surrounded by slums, or pockets of underdevelopment within the wealth. \n\nthe new buzzword for these countries is 'emerging markets\" and they have been growing at a much faster rate than the old \"first world\" for quite some time. their economies were and are much, much smaller per capita, so itll be a long time beforw they catch up, but they are definitely improving. ",
"Second world nations were allied with the Soviet Union - basically, they were communist. Once the USSR ended and European communism fell, that talk ended as well.\n\nThen, the meaning of the words changed, and \"3rd World\" went from 'unaligned with the USSR or USA and not taking a strong stand on capitalism v socialism' to only discussion of '3rd world hellhole' to finally '3rd world' being synonymous with being a hellhole. ",
"The world designations have nothing to do with economy. \n\nFirst world is the US and its allies during the cold war. \n\nSecond world is the USSR (Russia and former block countries) and its allies. \n\nThird world were those countries that said neutral. \n\nOften Third world nations are poor because they did not get money from their benefactor (US or USSR) to build up their country. But it s is absolutely erroneous to use the term to designate a poor country. Ireland and Switzerland are third world nations that are doing great. "
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4bu91d | what exactly went down with the arizona voting scandal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bu91d/eli5_what_exactly_went_down_with_the_arizona/ | {
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"Hoo boy... let's break it down into the five key issues.\n\n1) Though the number of people expected to vote in Maricopa County (which includes the entirety of the city of Phoenix) rose nearly 3 times over the same voting period in 2012 (from 300,000 to 800,000 voters), the number of places operated for people to vote at was cut by nearly 75% (from 200 locations to 60). This led to voter-per-polling -location density increase of approximately 900%. Whereas the average number of voters per location in 2012 was 1,500, this time it was around 13,000 per location.\n\nAs a sub-point to this, there were no polling locations _at all_ in certain minority-centric, especially Latino, neighborhoods.\n\nVarious similar issues happened all over the state.\n\n2) Multiple polling locations (at least four confirmed) were evacuated in the middle of the day as a result of 'bomb threats' and 'bomb scares.' Nobody has been able to or willing to provide evidence of any actual threat.\n\n3) Thousands of voters, especially Democrats, arrived at their chosen voting locations and (some after standing in line for 5+ hours) were told they were not registered Democrats and thus were not allowed to vote on the Democratic ballot - they were instead given provisional ballots. Without a Democratic ballot, you don't get to vote for Democratic candidates, without a Republican ballot you don't get to vote for Republican candidates, etcetera. \n\nThis does make a certain sort of sense - this is the closed primaries, and you're only voting on who each given party will choose as its candidate for presidency when the general election rolls around in November. \n\nHowever, most of these Democrats who arrived to vote and ended up being told they weren't registered actually _were_. Instead, the states (this isn't limited to Arizona) have been changing people's registered party affiliations without their knowledge or consent, often from 'Democrat' to 'Independent' or 'None'. For those changing their affiliations to Democrat, states have been 'mis-placing' or mis-filing' their applications. \n\nRemember, if you get to the polls in these states and you're not a registered member of a given party, you don't get to vote for that party.\n\n4) It is entirely at the discretion of polling administrators whether or no provisional (i.e. non-Democrat and non-Republican) ballots get counted at all - they are entirely at liberty to take every provisional ballot and toss them straight in the trash.\n\n5) Many media organizations - with the Associated Press leading the charge - called Arizona in Hillary Clinton's favor... despite the fact that at the time they called it (2030 local time) less than a percent of cast ballots had even been counted, and thousands of people were still in line to vote at various locations.\n\n-\n\nThat's the basics of it, really. Similar issues have been happening in New York and Illinois, as of last reporting."
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3mglon | if you get a piece of pencil graphite stuck in your body (i.e. a hand), why doesn't it go away? | I accidentally stabbed myself with a pencil 8 years ago at my palm. There's still a dull grey dot where I was stabbed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mglon/eli5_if_you_get_a_piece_of_pencil_graphite_stuck/ | {
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"Nope...I still have a piece in my left palm from 3rd grade when my best friend accidentally stabbed my hand with a pencil. I haven't had any issues with it though, it doesn't bother me the slightest. ",
"This is called a Traumatic Tattoo. They also happen when people who work in coal mines have a cut and coal dust gets into the wound, or when dirt, asphalt dust, etc. get embedded into \"road rash\" from an abrasion. Basically, the particles act as pigment, and are held in the skin without being expelled (just like an intentional tattoo).",
"17 years ago,in 4th grade, I was walking between desks carrying a pencil with the tip pointed into my palm. No idea why,dumb kid I guess. Pencil hit a desk,jabbed into my palm. \n\nStill have a black dot to this day."
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8anrm6 | how would being trapped in a “sensory deprivation” tank/room affect your mind and mental state? wouldn’t you just recover eventually? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8anrm6/eli5_how_would_being_trapped_in_a_sensory/ | {
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"It'd be a massive strain on you for a mix of two similar reasons. The first is that humans are really bad at facing boredom, which being locked up alone for a month would have a lot of. It's because we're such social creatures, that being kept away from any sort of mental stimulation for that long messes with our brains. If you want to see a better example, Michael from Vsauce does 3 days in a sensory deprivation tank with a camera and you can see how he changes as the hours go by.",
"I think the underlying problem is that what you currently consider as silence, or a lack of sensory input such as total darkness, is nothing of the sort. \nTheres a range of underlying background sounds that your brain tunes out. \n\nFaced with genuine silence (or total darkness) your brain has to seek stimulation on its own and thats when things get freaky. \nYour living neurones do not like sitting around bored."
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2a34ze | why people are so committed to being fans of losing sports teams? (detroit) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a34ze/eli5_why_people_are_so_committed_to_being_fans_of/ | {
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"Because it's that much better when your team wins.\n\nThat is unless you're a Cubs fan then your team will never win. The rest of us have a shot.",
"Being committed means watching games, buying merchandise, and going to games. All of these things generate more revenue for the team, and more demand for their products. More demand raises prices and creates even more revenue. Teams with more money can afford better players, and better amenities and arenas, which attracts even better players.\n\nBut the biggest thing is heart. The more heart a team has behind them, the better they perform. In sports like football it makes a huge difference.\n\nI am a Niners fan. At an early age they had Steve Young and the team was great. After I was old enough to go to games and get really into being a fan, the team sucked. And I stood by them and supported them for many years. Being frustrated by poor decisions and terrible seasons. Until one day they hired Trent Baalke. Things changed, we made great moves, and became a great team. And being a part of that is the greatest thing ever. Its fun to have a winning team, but its even better to dedicate so much to a losing team and see them rise to glory.\n\nThat my friend, is sports.",
"The same reason people live in opression... the fallacy of hope."
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2l6chx | why does exercise suppress appetite? | So if I am really hungry and I go for a long walk or I do some pushups or any other exercise that wears me out I no longer feel hungry afterward. Yet you'd think it would work up an appetite?
If I then eat I feel hungry again, but so long as I don't eat afterward the hunger doesn't come back for hours. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l6chx/eli5_why_does_exercise_suppress_appetite/ | {
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"When your body is preparing for movement, fight or flight mechanisms, or non-rest activities, it typically redistributes blood in your body away from your digestive tract, including your stomach, which decreases appetite. It's all part of your sympathetic nervous system and how it controls your ability to respond to situations.\n\nOn mobile, will add to this later if no one else has already.",
"I couldn't disagree more- I get violently hungry after the gym."
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88a04o | why do shoes have a sole inside them that is not glued to the bottom, but can slide? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88a04o/eli5_why_do_shoes_have_a_sole_inside_them_that_is/ | {
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"You mean the insole? Basically so you can replace it if you need to. Also, in any decent shoe, the insole won't be moving around. "
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do6acc | how do certain sounds (scratching a blackboard, rustling cardboard) trigger physical sensations such as teeth sensitivity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/do6acc/eli5_how_do_certain_sounds_scratching_a/ | {
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"My favourite example of this phenomenon is thinking about eating a lemon. Instantly, we pucker our lips with memories of eating this sour fruit. \n\nEffectively, neurons translate information to various parts of our body — including our muscles. \n\nLargely, we have automatic responses to various environmental stimuli. Seeing something moving in our peripheral and automatically looking; hearing a sound and looking that way; hearing a baby cry and feeling anxiety and a desire to help; blushing; fetal position when in danger; smiling when you see someone you know; laughing when others laugh. \n\nThe exact mechanism(s) through which instinctual behaviour is employed is difficult to say. Our reptile brains cause many of these autonomic responses — including something like physical sensations when hearing a screeching sound. \n\nIt could have been a predator thousands of years ago!"
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61vyt1 | how do the helmet microphones that a helicopter or small plane pilot uses only pick up voice and not the helicopter engine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61vyt1/eli5_how_do_the_helmet_microphones_that_a/ | {
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"The use active noise reduction. There are two microphones, one pointed towards the mouth and one pointed away. One picks up speech + noise and the other just picks up noise. Subtract the 2nd signal from the first and you are just left with the speech. \n\nSimilar technology is used in telephones, noise cancelling headphones, fetal heart beat monitors, etc.",
"They use a hypercardioid microphone which has a cone that gets audio primarily from one direction, and heavily favoring audio sources nearby vs. further (called falloff). \n\nThen, they also use an active noise reduction system where a second microphone does the *opposite*, pointed away from them, that primarily picks up the background noise. Then a tiny computer chip analyzes the background noise and creates a \"counter frequency\" that lessens the background noise in the transmission.."
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3virxf | why do we sometimes hear a very high frequency sound for a few seconds out of nowhere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3virxf/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_hear_a_very_high/ | {
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"Do you mean tinnitus?",
"I have no clue what the answer is, but just reading that caused it to happen to me. Shit. ",
"I would also like to know more. I've noticed this happening to me a lot more often recently",
"It's ~~probably~~ maybe your ear follicles vibrating. You have tiny hair follicles in your ears that communicate with the auditory system in your brain. These follicles essentially absorb the vibrations that make up sound. Some of these emit their own vibration back in an attempt to make less audible frequencies more audible. Inadvertently, sometimes these follicles will vibrate when there are no other vibrations being received, which creates a light ringing noise.\n",
"I've always wondered about this myself, I can remember experiencing it since at least 5th grade but probably before then as well. Usually only notice it when I'm alone. If I focus I can make it sound louder, pretty much to the point of blocking out any other sound. ",
"Person who has tinnitus and gets this all the time here. /u/DoppleFlopper and /u/xmalteaser8x have the correct answers. You hear by having sounds vibrate tiny hairs in your cochlear. How deep the hair is in the cochlear determines the sound, and what you're hearing is one of them breaking. Yes, this means that hair can no longer detect sound, but you've got a bunch so it's not a big deal. \nIf you get it enough to worry you though, or start to experience consistent ringing, I'd recommend seeing your doctor.",
"Just for reference, [this](_URL_0_) is the sound that you're hearing, right?\n\nIf you're hearing this for a few seconds in an otherwise silent environment, you're experiencing something called 'tinnitus', or hearing something when there's not anything to hear.\n\nTinnitus is not a disease, mind you. It's a symptom of what could be a hundred different things, from hearing loss to blood vessel diseases to depression to vitamin B12 deficiency . . . it's a pretty common symptom.\n\nThis is because hearing is a supremely delicate sense. Hearing involves tiny little hairs in your ears that naturally vibrate. When they come across a sound, they change the rate at which they vibrate. This change is then sent to the brain, which translates it into the sound that you hear. But you don't perceive all the sounds you hear, because your brain can choose to highlight certain signals at certain times—you don't want your ear sensitivity all the way up when you're at a rave, just like you don't want it to be all the way down when you're trying to sneak around.\n\nWhen you hear these sounds, and you don't have any medical conditions that might cause tinnitus, it's likely that what's happening is due to this ear-brain interaction. You're sitting in a mostly quiet environment, so your brain raises its sensitivity to detect smaller noises. It keeps on raising and raising its sensitivity until it hears *something*, and usually this something is actually the sound of those little hairs in your ear vibrating just by themselves, without any outside sound present.\n\nThe reason that it goes away after awhile is because the brain hears the same tone for a bit and then decides that since the signal isn't changing, it isn't important. This is similar to when you forget that your watch is on your wrist because your brain has felt it not move for so long that it decided that feeling it on your wrist it wasn't important and stopped you from perceiving it in the first place.\n\nTL;DR: Your brain's a jerk, but only because it's constantly looking out for you.\n\n",
"It's probably just spontaneous depolarization in the stereocilia, similar to the cause of random muscle fasciculations.",
"I think it's most likely that the noise you're hearing is electronic feedback through the microphones that the FBI have implanted in the drywall of your house.",
"I notice that everyone thinks this is tinnitus, but the way I experience it is that it comes on suddenly, then quickly fades. That's not tinnitus, I have tinnitus and this is something entirely different.\n\nI read somewhere (obviously can't find the source, I believe it may have even been reddit) that what causes it is a rapid equalization of pressure between the atmosphere and your inner ear canal, and the \"sound\" you hear is actually your aural nerves re-establishing their base-line quiet sound, like a little reboot after a sudden disruption in the air pressire."
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63laim | how do people get from sitting on a sofa to opening a business, what is the process after idea is born? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63laim/eli5_how_do_people_get_from_sitting_on_a_sofa_to/ | {
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"So people think there's some kind of secret process to opening a business. There's not. In most places, you don't need to register anything, don't need to do anything special at all. Just sell something to someone and collect their money (keep records).\n\nThe more complicated stuff starts to come into play as the business grows. Keep records of what you buy and sell (for taxes). Once you get larger it might be time to hire an accountant and/or lawyer and look at the legal business structure to best distribute profits but that all comes later.\n\nTo start a business all you need to do is begin. Get off the sofa and go sell. "
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3eyyr5 | why does india fund a space program, while they have a ton of problems on earth already? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eyyr5/eli5_why_does_india_fund_a_space_program_while/ | {
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"I found this very interesting and detailed answer from an Indian man working as a research intern in a Space Center: \n\nSrihari Menon, Research intern, Advanced propulsion research group, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre \n\nThis is a very important question. Not only for India, but for every country, in fact for the entire human race. Why should astronomical amounts of money be pumped into astronomical research? Why shouldn't the money be used to feed the poor, protect the weak, provide education, improve the economy? What if I told you, that in funding one idea, you are achieving all of the above, and much more.\n\nMy answer is divided into three parts, hoping to appease the logos, ethos and pathos of everyone.\n\n**Utilitarian view:**\n \nA space program is important for the nation's economy, homeland security and technological superiority.\nISRO's achievements: \n \nRISAT-1: India's own crop monitoring satellite. Gives the government an idea of the quality, quantity, and failure if any, of crops. Important for national food security.\n\nINSAT-4A & 4B: Advanced satellite for direct-to-home television broadcasting services. You get to watch TV because of this.\n\nRESOURCESAT-1 and the IRS series: Remote sensing Satellites for meteorological data and flood imaging. If a flood is to happen or is happening, we know of it before we see its destruction because of these satellites. \n\nRISAT-2: India's \"spy satellite\" used for military purposes, to check infiltration, and observe potential terrorist activities. \n\nAnd many more. Here's the list: List of Indian satellites. 74 in all. \nWe take a lot of everyday activities for granted. From the cellphones we use, to the TV we watch, ISRO touches lives in ways so subtle, It is understandable why one questions the importance of our space program. The next time a calamity strikes, thank the Indian army for saving people, but don't forget how they came to know of it. Went to the grocery store to buy the weeks rations? one reason why the store isn't empty is because the government knew which crops could make it to the store. But wonder who told the government. This television program is brought to you by Vicco vajradanti? Not entirely. \n\nFurthermore, India has the world's most successful Space launch vehicle: PSLV. Success rate? 96%. This is important because When other countries and private institutions see this, their confidence grows and are more willing to pay the fee for the service we provide: we launch satellites for others. At a price. \n\n**Nationalistic view:** \n\nIt is very clear from history that space exploration, in the very least, is a matter of national pride and ego. Space exploration superiority was one front of the Cold war. Placing man on the moon was celebrated more as an American achievement than a Human race achievement. So goes with India for having discovered water on the Moon. \nIn plain words, If my country's space program achieved something and yours didn't, my country is better than yours. A lot like mothers showing off their \"mera beta IIT- meri bachi NIT\" trophies. \nHonestly this is a very shallow reason to be funding a science and engineering program, but under this garb, at least science is progressing. \n\nThis view closely intersects with the homeland security reason as well. Superior technology in this field means a better ability to develop spy satellites, ICBMs and their likes. \n\n**My view:** \n\nI personally support space programs for a very different reason. I can keep going on about how funding a space program will get you better appliances in your kitchen, or tell you whether it'll rain today, or improve the speed of your internet connection, and so on. But here is the real reason why people work in this field. \nWe humans are insignificant beings living on an insignificant speck of dust. Don't get my philosophy? guess what this is: \n\nThis photograph was taken by the voyager 1 space probe 6 billion kilometers from us in 1990. And that pale blue pixel? Earth. Try spotting India. Or any other country that claims superiority. One disease. One meteorite. One solar fare. One volcano. One button press. No one will ever know humans ever existed. All the work that you did, your forefathers did, all the great battles fought, all the wars won, all the monuments we erected, all the money you earned, all those moments you felt you made a change. POOF. And its all gone. As if it were never there. \n\nThis poses a threat so possible and thus so scary, that we'd rather look the other way and choose oblivion. But here's the challenge: Should our physical insignificance eliminate any chance of our survival? Does the height of our body also define the depth of our mind? Does size really matter? This photo tells us that we are small, but it also tells that we know that we are small. It tells us that thus far, like it or not, this is our only home. But it also tells us that if we tried hard enough, we may have options to grow. options to other homes. Greater chances of survival. And a greater chance at significance. This is the very emotion , the very idea with which a new space craft is built, or a new space program is undertaken: It is one step closer towards a tomorrow. Not a better tomorrow. A tomorrow. Thousands of years down the line, no ones going to care who was the first man on the moon, or which space organization built the better space vehicle. We aren't talking about India or America any more. We are talking humans. And we are talking survival. The spectrum of this idea is so wide, and the plan of action so bold, that in fear and awe, people sub-consciously ask, \"can we really do it?\". The question you ask here is a level below this: \"why should we do it? We won't be successful. there's no point.\" And here's the answer: We have no other choice. We have no other place to call home. Exploring space is the only way out we have. Sure nothing is going to happen in our lifetime (hopefully), but if we really wish for a better shot at the survival of our children, we'd have to work for generations. So the next time you hear the Prime minister allocate a percent of the annual budget to space research, don't fret about it, instead realize that we are doing our bit towards the greatest feat man has ever under taken. To survive. ",
"Status. They want to be seen as making their way in the world and doing as westerners do. There is also very little (if any at times) compassion between strangers, and even less between those with money and those without.\n\nSource: I'm an expat in India, and witness it on a daily basis.",
"It gives humanity hope. Hope is one of the most powerful things around, for good or bad. Give people something to strive towards and they will. keep trying. "
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32xu3j | how come when i cook an egg over a campfire it explodes unless i poke a hole in it but hardboiled eggs dont. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32xu3j/eli5_how_come_when_i_cook_an_egg_over_a_campfire/ | {
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"Direct heat from a campfire (1000+ degrees) is going to heat the inside of the egg much quicker than boiling water (212 degrees). When you hardboil an egg the air inside it slowly expands and escapes through the shell as the egg heats. When you heat an egg over a fire, that air expands quicker than it can escape the shell, so without a hole to act as a vent, it will build up pressure inside and explode."
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1prt6g | why do people like jenny mccarthy think vaccines cause autism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1prt6g/eli5_why_do_people_like_jenny_mccarthy_think/ | {
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"She was repeatedly dropped on her head when she was an infant; that and a terrible mix of [junk science](_URL_0_) and confirmation bias. ",
"There was [a paper written in The Lancet by Dr. Wakefield](_URL_0_) that spurred most of the initial movement to suggest that vaccinations caused autism in children.\n\nAlthough this paper was later discredited, it's hard to stop all the paranoia and fear after the fact.\n\nAlso, a lie like this is easier for some people to take than the scarier truth. If autism has a single, definable cause, then you can villify the medical community, claim that they are causing sickness for profit and are evil people. There's a lightning rod for all of your vitriol and pain and a clear motive in place. Otherwise, the alternative is that doctors are really trying hard, but can't come up with a good, definitive cause, nor can they come up with a good cure and the world is a scary place with lots of unknowns. \n\nCombine this with a general distrust of authorities and a feedback loop quickly develops where they don't trust any published articles because it's part of the institution that's trying to promote that vaccines are healthy for profit and they will only believe non-peer reviewed sources of information which confirms their beliefs that vaccines are dangerous.\n\n",
"Mostly ignorance, misconceptions and pseudoscience. ",
"McCarthy is one of these people who think pushing an infant out of one's vagina makes one a superior intellect somehow.\n\nSeriously though, she's a person who has the same weakness most people have: the need to have answers. It doesn't matter how poorly thought-out, inaccurate, or ludicrous on their face they are. So long as they are answers, she will latch onto them like they are her child.\n\nIt's the same reason people argue that their religion is true because they can answer questions that \"science can't.\" They feel better just having AN answer, ANY answer, rather than hold out for the RIGHT answer and living with a mystery.\n\nThe reason she continues believing it is the same reason people can watch a psychic make 600 wrong predictions in a row but will claim she is \"eerily accurate,\" and \"one of a kind\" because she got a few correct. It's the same reason some people can be presented with the mountain of evidence that a worldwide flood is not only utterly impossible but utterly absurd to believe, but will still believe in it wholeheartedly because a Kurdish scam artist sold a minister a plank of old wood he claimed was from Noah's ark. \n\nWhen people want something to be true bad enough, they will filter out all the information that contradicts their view and only pay attention to what confirms it. It's called confirmation bias."
]
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1rikag | can your mind function driving a vehicle on auto-pilot? | I will be driving like normal and after awhile my mind is on other things and I will even forget how I arrived to wherever I was going. It's hard to explain. Does this happen to anyone else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rikag/eli5_can_your_mind_function_driving_a_vehicle_on/ | {
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"This has happened to me before, and is partly why I'm glad that NYC has such good public transit. It scares the shit out of me when I drive, and I haven't found a surefire way to deal with it.\n\nI believe that what happens is the sub-conscious takes over, somewhat. I've 'snapped' back when something is happening that requires more specific attention, but I've found that unless I am exerting direct control, beyond my brain attempting to provide some minor form of muscular control, its less 'auto-pilot' and more 'drive in a straight line until you hit something.'",
"Yes, and it scares me.\n\nMy Theory: Driving is a fairly simple task and is boring. Its not surprising that it is easy to tune out and think about other things. If you are familiar with the road/route or its a \"drive straight for 500 miles scenario\" you might find yourself navigating on auto pilot because its so easy.\n\nStill super scary though, especially if you get pulled out of it quickly.",
"I've read that when that happens, your brain is producing theta waves, which are low frequency, high amplitude brainwaves associated with meditation and relaxation. It's common for the brain to lapse into that sort of state when engaged in a dull, repetitive task like driving. I believe it's also one of the chief causes of machining accidents. \nInterestingly enough, it's actually possible to tell when a brain is about to do this about one minute beforehand, if you're hooked up to an EEG. There was some talk of inventing something which would alert people that they were about to lose focus... But I don't think portable EEGs are really a thing yet, so we probably won't see that any time soon."
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fdbgqv | why is it so hard to just tune out and think about nothing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fdbgqv/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_just_tune_out_and_think/ | {
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"Because by attempting to think about nothing, you are thinking about something. It's more like letting your mind wander. No focus, no intent other than breathing in and breathing out. Let the thought happen that will happen."
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[]
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7jzl1b | why are veins used for injections instead of arteries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jzl1b/eli5_why_are_veins_used_for_injections_instead_of/ | {
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"Arteries carry large amounts of blood under higher pressure. Puncturing these requires specialized equipment or else you will kill your patient from the rapid blood loss. \n\nThat being said said some medicines, like chemo drugs, are too abrasive to veins and must be administered through an artery. For everything else, veins are much safer and just as effective. ",
"Arteries are the blood vessels coming from the heart, which are therefore under pressure. They have thick walls, and if you puncture them, blood will be pushed out. Veins meanwhile are not pressurized and have much thinner walls, and use the ~~pulsing of the arteries~~ muscles instead to carry the blood back to the heart.\n\nSo they are easier to puncture, and won't draw as much blood.\n\nEdit: Just in case you're wondering how veins work: They have a sort of valves in them, which only let blood flow towards the heart. When they're compressed, blood flows out towards the heart, and when they expand again, blood flows in from the other side."
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2k8nvh | how did planets form to have their own gravitational pull? why is the core so hot? | Just thinking about planet formation. How do these massive things even stick together? How did a gravitational pull in a single location built mass that became a planet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k8nvh/eli5_how_did_planets_form_to_have_their_own/ | {
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"It's a domino effect. One clump of slightly larger mass will begin to attract less massive objects. The more it attracts, the more massive it becomes, and the larger it grows. Pretty soon you have a planet.",
"Click all over the screen and then watch patiently:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Ok first question:\n\nEverything has a gravitational pull. Not just planets. You have a gravitational pull and so does your cat and your socks. Everything with mass is constantly pulling on everything else with Mass no matter how far they are. If they aren't moving fast enough to counteract the force pulling them together then they eventually collide and form a larger object with a greater pull. This continues to happen until you get planets. In some cases the planets get so massive that their gravitational pull is stronger than the forces keeping atoms far apart and then the sun will collapse into a black hole.\n\nSecond question:\n\n > There are three main sources of heat in the deep earth: (1) heat from when the planet formed and accreted, which has not yet been lost; (2) frictional heating, caused by denser core material sinking to the center of the planet; and (3) heat from the decay of radioactive elements."
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9fasae | how does the phone number cloning tech used by scammers work? can it be prevented? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9fasae/eli5how_does_the_phone_number_cloning_tech_used/ | {
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"Changing your phone number is a feature of the phone system, and any phone can do it. This is useful, for example, if a company has an outgoing block of numbers, but they want to present a unified callback number.\n\nThere is no way to fix the problem without getting the phone companies involved, and they're not going to take away this service. Further, there are services, some free, where you can redirect an incoming call in order to reveal the original number. The best you're typically going to get, though, is some outgoing ATA, where the caller originates on the internet somewhere, and is essentially impossible to track. If you couldn't call a phone number from the internet, this problem would basically go away, but that technology isn't going to go anywhere, either, because companies all use VoIP internally and route outgoing calls through some teleservice, and there are companies that offer this as a service to anyone.\n\nI would say phone records are really dodgy in court these days, but that's the job of the defense to shoot that shit down."
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23turt | would colonizing mars affect the orbit of the earth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23turt/eli5_would_colonizing_mars_affect_the_orbit_of/ | {
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"Nope. Humans weigh virtually nothing as far the Earth is concerned.\n\nFor an amusing read - _URL_0_"
]
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1r79mn | how does the b-movie industry work. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r79mn/eli5_how_does_the_bmovie_industry_work/ | {
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"They dish out movies with small budgets. Then they put them for sale on various selling points, like netflix, cable tv and stuff. Because of the small budget IT'll get a profit sometimes. \n\nThey are often made in bulk so movies that made good money carry less fortunate films.\n\nThe tradition started around the time of the double bills. Two movies for the price of One in the cinema. What do you do when you have to counteract that? Make cheap movies. Films like attack from the crabmonsters and attack of the 50 ft woman were extremely cheap to shoot (think 10.000 dollar to 60.000) dollars, but were extremely beloved by teenagers, thus making them profitable.\n\nNot sure if that made it clear. If you need more info: ask.\n\nSource: master student in film studies"
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3n7qmy | how does the american political system make it so difficult for obama to introduce tighter gun controls? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n7qmy/eli5_how_does_the_american_political_system_make/ | {
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"In the United States it is not the president who introduces new legislation to be written into law. The president signs bills into law.",
"The American government is based on what we call 'Checks and Balances', where-in our three branches of government (Judicial, Legisative, Executive) are limited in power so they can not make unilateral decisions. For instance, the President can veto a law passed by Congress (Legislative). Congress can overrule that veto with 2/3 of the vote from both houses of the Legislative Branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court, the highest entity in the Judicial Branch, can rule that law unconstitutional. So one branch is always able to 'check' another.\n\nIt is a good system for preventing one group from having too much power, but it is hindered by party loyalty. This makes it very hard for even objectively good laws to be passed because each party is so stubborn and do not want the other to get credit, basically. Both parties blame the other for no compromises being made, and they can never come together to get anything done on many major issues, such as gun laws (which I'm guessing this question might be based on)."
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dj74s6 | what's the point of cvc or cvv om credit card? | If online transaction only need card number and CVC/CVV, then when the card is stolen there's no additional security layer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dj74s6/eli5_whats_the_point_of_cvc_or_cvv_om_credit_card/ | {
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"Probably to prevent the card from being used if you only got a stolen number from a website without CVV",
"The CVV/CVC is there to protect against people who get the card number/account information without getting the physical card. In the case that your card is physically stolen, you can just report it stolen and your credit provider can stop all transaction involving the account/card number. Thus even with the CVC/CVV the card is useless.",
" > If online transaction only need card number and CVC/CVV, then when the card is stolen there's no additional security layer?\n\nIt depends. Some vendors use AVS (Address Verification) that ends up being mostly invisible to the end user. There's also additional layers like 3-D Secure (Verified by Visa/Mastercard SecureCode, etc.), which may require users to authenticate themselves when using a particular card online.\n\nSome banks are starting to issue cards that have CVVs that rotate - Bank of America currently has a pilot program for debit cards where the card actually contains a battery and a small LCD screen, where the CVV changes every 6 hours. Stealing the card number and CVV without physically having the card will mean expiration for that CVV.",
"On a typical credit card the magnetic stripe contains all the information about the card. CC number, name , expiration date etc. All data EXCEPT the CVC. The CVC is also printed, not embossed, so that it was not recorded on the old-style credit card receipts. The intent was that you need to be in physical possession of the card to use it since the only way to know it was to read it off the card. \n\nFurthermore vendors are not permitted to store the CVC in any form. Several vendors have been busted for this and fined heavily.\n\nObviously if your card is stolen then that's not good. Personally I memorize my CVC and then scratch it off.",
"From the CVV, no, that sort of security is provided by a PIN. \n\nThe purpose of the CVV is if your **number** is stolen, by someone reading the magnetic strip or getting it from a data leak.",
"This is something that I have been wondering about myself. Between all these answers, there is still one very obvious question that doesn't seem to be answered: why do creditcard companies use this half-baked system? Surely nobody here disputes the usefulness of 2FA, or the stupidity of feeling safe because thieves need to look at *both* sides of your card before they can steal your money?\n\n\nI suspect it is in part because electronics weren't as developed when creditcards were invented, back when signatures were still required and PINs couldn't be quickly verified. Although I don't know if CVC's were in use back then.\n\n\nBut why haven't they changed the system more by now? Sure, there's an extra security code but it is too long, rarely asked for, and confusing because now you have two codes. Do people really feel secure now? Maybe they just don't care? Or maybe the companies are unwilling to invest in implementing a PIN?\n\n\n\n\nEdit: ok maybe thieves won't steal *your* money if you block your card in time. But they will definitely steal somebody's money, usually some poor shopkeeper's who can't cash in on his payment."
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140352 | even when they don't support you, why must a college student use parents tax returns on the fafsa until 24 years of age? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/140352/eli5_even_when_they_dont_support_you_why_must_a/ | {
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"I don't have a good answer, but I wanted to say that I encountered this problem myself and found it extremely frustrating. For anyone unfamiliar with the problem, to file FAFSA independently you have to be over 24, or else you have to meet one of several special criteria, i.e., be married, a grad student, a veteran, an orphan, a ward of the court (or previously a ward of the court), or have legal dependents, or get special permission to file independently.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is an article that tries to answer your question, although I don't think it does a good job of answering the \"why.\"\n\nBasically it gives your parents the power to screw you over and manipulate you with money, unless you are somehow able to come up with your own money to pay for school and support yourself without getting loans. And that is pretty hard to do while you are a full-time student.",
"Thank you for asking this. My friend hasn't talked to his parents in years and had to track them down. Wtf for?",
"I'm not familiar with the specifics of the American system, but in a system with limited resources, it makes sense to prioritise support to those with the least other avenues available. With the demand outstripping resources, the eligibility/means testing limits need to be set somewhere and it is always unfortunate for those just out of eligibility. \n\nAs a government, how do you tell if somebody is lying when they say that they are not being supported by their parents? You dont want to trust the word of the people who have most to gain from lying. Im not sure about th US, but there should be some criteria to assess whether people are genuinely independent from their parents. I know other countries do have this. ",
"My guess is because it's exploitable. Like my parents could say \"they aren't supporting me\" and then I would have much lower income and I would get better financial aid maybe including grants. \n\nAnd then later on they could \"reenter my life\" and pay off my loans.",
"I always thought this was a terrible policy, but as a result of my previous summer job, I got a lot of first-hand experience with government records, including tax stuff (and FAFSA stuff). They keep ALL of it, usually in paper form, and it's actually quite easy to dig up all of one person's tax information if you know where to look (the government does). I moved and refiled and in general dealt with tax returns from the 40's. They can look through all your records, and your parents', and determine pretty easily if you're being supported or not. It's all about fraud prevention.\n\n**TL;DR: It's annoying, but if you just do it and don't lie, they won't care. They have to do it because assholes.**",
"I have struggled with this myself, especially since I am on disability and my parents don't support me so I have very little money to afford college, but it's basically like this.\n\nIn the eyes of federal aid you are not legally independent from your parents until the age of 24 unless you are married, have kids, are a grad student, a military veteran, orphan, at the risk of being homeless, or is an emancipated minor. \n\nThink of it this way: Many college students between 18-24 do have the tendency to go to their parents in need of money so their parents income and assets need to be included. Two out of three of my siblings (and myself) lived with my mother at some point in our college careers in an attempt to save money because we were going to colleges nearby. I am 24 years old and still seek help from my mother when I am out of food or need a ride to the doctor (not really ashamed of it). \n\nIn the typical college student situation you tend to see the student seek some loans and assistance from the parental units. The end.",
"That screwed me. I had no relationship with my father but I had to list his income, which was too high for me to get much in financial aid. I think I got $700.",
"Most of these people don't understand how the system works. For your parents to not LEGALLY support you, you have to become emancipated from them. After that point they are no longer required for FAFSA.\n\n",
"I had a couple of students who actually got married so they would just have their own incomes considered since their parents refused to help them but had decent income. They planned to divorce after college. There was no sex even though they were roommates (nor would there be as he was gay).",
"Because you can't prove they are not supporting you. Most people would lie.",
"Fundamentally, your parents should support you before the tax-payer.\n\nIn the eyes of the federal government, your parents have more responsibility to pay for your college education than the government.",
"Yeah, my mother's credit card debt created a serious problem for me when securing funding, even though I paid my own bills, etc.",
"The entire title 4 system makes the rather ridiculous assumption that parents are going to hold themselves responsible for the education of their children.\n\nEven if you're 100% financially independent, you have to demonstrate total estrangement from your parents to get a dependency override approved.\n\nIt bears mentioning that independent students are eligible for a LOT more funding than independent students, and dependent students are only eligible for Pell based on their parent's income status.\n\nSource: I work as a financial aid officer.",
"I am so fed up with this. I can't apply for federal aid (20 years old) because my parents refuse to give me their tax returns. I don't make nearly enough money to pay for college myself, so I feel like I'm stuck in limbo. ",
"Mom - \"when I finished college I started out with nothing!!\" \nMe - \"yea well ill be started out with negative $60000!!\"\nMom - *changes subject*\n\nFucking baby boomers ",
"This is exactly why I got married so early. I know I want to be with my husband forever so we decided to get married so that we both can afford school. ",
"Too bad this will be buried, but there is a tremendous non-profit organization that will help you identify the best schools and scholarship programs for free. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\nBecause of this wonderful organization, my kid is attending a private school out of state for less than $10,000 a year including books, housing, and food."
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5647f8 | how do musical intervals work? | I've just seen some image that separates various well known songs into their respective 'intervals' apparently, and I'm sitting here humming along like a nobhead to them all trying to work out why "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean" is a Major 6th, the Star Wars theme is a Perfect 5th, and Usher's "Yeah" is Minor 7th.
What the frick does this all mean?
Eggy facebook link to image: _URL_0_
edit: Flaired as.. Culture I guess? I have a sneaking suspicion this may turn out to be Mathematical though. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5647f8/eli5_how_do_musical_intervals_work/ | {
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"It refers to the first two notes in each song. An interval is the jump between 2 notes. \nA scale has 8 notes, with a total of 12 half-note steps. If you want to be mathematical, the frequency doubles every 8 notes, i.e. octave. It's also where the piano keys repeat in their pattern. \nThe list is really just a way to memorize the sounds of these jumps. When you hum \"somewhere over the rainbow\", then from \"some\" to \"where\" it's an octave, or 8 notes jump. That way you can hear it in your head and identify it more easily. ",
"If you sing the first four notes of the Star Wars theme (da-da-da-daa) then go do-ray-me up the scale to the next note, you'll sing five notes. Hence, perfect 5th.\n\nEdit: someone else explained it better earlier. I just got excited because it's rare that I can answer anything in this sub."
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198xis | the d drive vs the c drive, why are there two? | I should know this already. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/198xis/the_d_drive_vs_the_c_drive_why_are_there_two/ | {
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"Drive A and B are used for floppy disks, which aren't used anymore but the letters are still reserved for them.\n\nThe remaining letters, starting with \"C\", are used for the other drives you have. \"C\" is usually your main hard drive, followed by \"D\" which can be (for example) a DVD reader or a second harddrive.\n\nIt also might be so that your main hard drive is split up into two \"fake\" disks, something called partitioning. Sometimes when you buy a new computer, the manufacturer has already split up the harddrive into two, with the second one containing recovery software.",
"Assuming that Windows shows that they are both hard drives (and not that the D drive is a CD-ROM drive or something similar), there are two likely reasons why you've got two of them:\n\nIt could be that your computer physically has two hard drives in it.\n\nOr it could be that it has one hard drive, which has been split into two \"partitions\". Windows treats each partition as a separate drive. The reason why it's been split in two could be either because your hard drive is bigger than the maximum partition size (which depends on the version of Windows you've got, how the drive has been set up or \"formatted\", and on your hardware - the most likely maximum sizes are 32Gb or 2Tb). Or because the computer manufacturer just felt like splitting it up, perhaps for historical reasons."
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5hsrgb | why do my teeth hurt/react when cutlery is scraped along a plate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hsrgb/eli5_why_do_my_teeth_hurtreact_when_cutlery_is/ | {
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"Also, why is there no name for this in English? I get it when something scrapes against ice.\n\nIn Afrikaans the word is 'gril'. As in: \"The sound of someone chewing ice makes me gril'.\n\nSurely this is a common enough phenomenon that we should name it?"
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2ali2j | why does a car tire require around 30 - 35 psi while a road bike tire can require up to 100+ psi? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ali2j/eli5_why_does_a_car_tire_require_around_30_35_psi/ | {
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"Surface area at the point of contact between the tires and the road. There is much more rubber-to-asphalt contact on 4 wide car tires than 2 thin bike tires. 1 square inch of contact on each of two 100-PSI tires is enough to support a human on a bike. Each car tire probably has something like 20 or 40 or more square inches of contact. All quick and dirty math. Don't quote my figures.",
"The average car weighs over a ton, not including passengers. Its main purpose is safe and enjoyable comfortable transportation. So you put a small amount of air in the tires so they'll grab the road for traction, not pop the minute you hit anything like a pebble, and cushion you when you hit a bump. The fatter, less-filled tire has more contact with the ground and therefore loses more energy to friction, but it's powered by gas so that's acceptable.\n\nThe average road bike's purpose is EFFICIENT transportation, and it's powered by humans. They will want to go as far as possible with as little effort as possible, and will actively steer to avoid bumps and objects on the road so comfort is not as critical. So they pump the tires up very high to minimize the amount of contact between tire and ground and cut down on friction as much as possible so they don't have to work as hard to pedal it. ",
"Think about the contact surface versus how much that contact surface has to hold up. Now think about when a tire is low on air. It gets flatter and the contact surface has enlarged to match the pressure versus the weight that it has to carry.\n\nSo now think about truck tires. Truck weights 40,000 pounds. Big tires with 80PSI X surface area X 18 = able to hold up a lot of weight.\n\nSay each truck tire has a surface area of 6 by 6 inches. That's 64 square inches. So, 64 X 80psi X 18 tires = 92,160 pounds they can hold up.\n\nNow think of a bike tire with one inch of contact area X 2 tires X 100psi = 400 pounds of bike and rider that they can hold up.\n\nThat's all relative theory. Relative to the design of the tire. If the tire was all rubber it wouldn't need any air, but I hope you get the general idea. Simply speaking, the weaker the sidewall the more pressure is needed until you get to the arithmetic above to calculate the pressure needs.",
"Your are all on the right track, but dont' forget about the tire construction. A car or truck tire has a much, much stiffer side wall than the side wall of a bike tire. Bike tires require the higher psi to stiffen the side wall. Cars don't. It's that simple. \n\n",
"TIL americans still use weird measures ",
"Psi stands for pounds per square inch. Car tires are big. More square inches. Less psi. Bike tires are small. Less square inches. More psi",
"Semis run 90-100 all the time",
"A few reasons.\nThey have a larger contact patch, so the lower pressure actually can lead to more load bearing capacity as it's force per square inch.\nThey have a much stronger casing, so some of the load is handled by the sidewalls, rather than the pressure.\nThe lower pressure can also be useful in that it doesn't try to turn the tire into a tube as hard, and can help improve grip.",
"a car tire has about 36 square inches of contact area. You get something close to 160 square inches of contact area, and at thirty six pounds a square inch average tire pressure, that makes a load limit of five thousand pounds - or two point five tons, which is much closer to a real car weight.\n\nThe bigger the contact area, the more rolling friction, the more aquaplane potential but better sliding friction. \n\nSidewall stiffness is another factor for handling. Proper inflation pressure is what gives the tire its designed stiffness and shock absorbing factors for best handling.\n\nA bike tire has only about a square inch or two of contact area. Two tires, and 80 pounds of air, you get a load limit nearer two hundred fifty pounds, and low rolling resistance.\n\nAll of which argues for maintaining safe tire inflation pressures so the tire does not over heat from too much flexing under load. A heavily loaded vehicle should have the air pumped up to the maximum tire pressure you can find printed on the sidewall.\n\nVehicle suspension and chassis designers specify tire size and inflation pressures for best handling and comfort.",
"The physics principle involved is Laplace's Law. Wall tension is inversely proportional to diameter. The wall tension of the tire is what is important for holding up the car. For thinner tires like on a bike, more internal pressure is required to produce the same wall tension as a car tire at a lower pressure. \n_URL_0_"
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201atr | who actually owns the credit card companies visa, master card, and american express? | Someone asked me when you use one what institution are you borrowing money from and it turned to be more complicated than I thought after Googling it... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/201atr/eli5_who_actually_owns_the_credit_card_companies/ | {
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"All three of those companies are floated on the stock exchange, so their owners are whoever it is that owns their shares. As with most large floated corporations, the majority of shareholders are likely to be corporate investors; in other words banks, other financial services companies, and pension and investment funds.",
"They are companies in their own right, and are owned by shareholders. MasterCard (originally Master Charge) was created by a group of banks (largely Wells Fargo) to compete with Bank of America's Visa (originally BankAmeriCard). Discover was created by Sears, and Amex was founded by the same folks as Wells Fargo, as an express delivery company. Like Wells, they later expanded into financial services with money orders and the famous travelers cheqies.",
"With the exception of Amex, those are not credit card companies and do not lend money. They are card sponsors, although I believe the US has a different term for this. Basically, your bank - the issuer - for example Bank of America, issues your MasterCard, and they have an agreement with MasterCard, such that merchants who accept MasterCard can accept *their* MasterCard. You pay in store with your card, the store tells it's bank - the acquirer - about the transaction, they put that money in the store's account, then goes off to your bank - the issuer - to collect the money, and in turn your bank go to you - the customer - to collect their money at a later date.\n\nYou don't borrow from Visa or MasterCard. You **do** borrow from Amex or Diners Club, because they are also issuers and acquirers. I don't know about other cards such as Discover.\n\n"
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188tbo | why do cats hate water as much as they do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/188tbo/eli5_why_do_cats_hate_water_as_much_as_they_do/ | {
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"Actually, most cats are either trained to like or dislike water, depending on their upbringing. It depends on how much time they've had to adjust to it. Some cats are very good at swimming, while others don't like it at all.",
"As in getting a bath or drinking it?",
"Cats dislike water for the same reason you do. It draws heat from your body more rapidly than air, forcing your body to work harder to stay warm. Cats have dense, double-layered, relatively non-oily fur, meaning that it takes them a long time to dry out. That hair exists to trap body heat close to the skin. When wet, that function is mostly disrupted. \n\nCats can be trained to like water as kittens. I've had some that will sleep in a wet sink. Without acclimation to water when young, though, they will naturally dislike it.",
"All of my cats love water. They sit in the sink and tub to drink. Since I am a vet, and we have to give baths occasionally, there is really not a lot of difference between dogs and cat as far as who hates water the most.",
"Cats ancestors are from arid dry areas of the world, instinctively they are use to not having much water around them. Which is why they are also hard to get to drink water from a bowl, many owners have to be cautious that their cat gets enough to prevent urinary tract issues or straight up dehydration. It is also why cats are best fed at least one canned or wet food meal a day. Basically the cat does not see a lot of water as a natural thing. Basically the only time they would see a lot of water would be the rainy season, where they would drown if they stuck around. So in essence, the cat thinks it's flooding and it will die, which is why they FREAK OUT and start trying to desperately claw themselves to safety. They CAN be taught to accept and even like water, since the distinct fear is an instinct, they can overcome it by training and proper socialization.",
"Sphynx cats are hairless and tend to like water more (they need to be regularly bathed). Part of this may be because they have no fur and water feels better on their skin directly than going through fur. Another part may be due to being washed frequently as kittens.",
"Cats' fur is a sensory organ. They use it feel air movements that tell them if anybody is around them plus it helps them with balance and stuff like that. Wet fur prevents that from happening. So if a cat never had its fur wet for a long period of time it would freak out because it's not sensing as well as it can.\n\nThis can be replicated by sticking post-it notes onto cats:\n\n_URL_0_",
"most cats are actually obsessed with the bathroom, and some will even try to get in with you. the real issue is psychological - cats hate to be dirty, and that's what they feel when they are wet. ",
"I have 2 Bengal cats, and they love water. I think different breeds react to water differently.",
"I have always wondered if part of this could be how cats eyes work, so much better in the dark. They always seem so curious how water looks, could it be that the cats eyes are seeing something with the water that intrigues them but then freaks them out once they touch it and it starts moving. Are cats perceiving water in a way that looks scary to them?",
"Now all of them do. \n\nMy cat is OK with water (I wash her sometimes) but she still obviously dislikes it.\n\nImagine if you're sleeping somewhere, all is nice and calm and then suddenly someone picks you up and pours a lot of water on you. You would probably dislike it, but is it fair to say that you hate water?\n\nSidenote: she does sometimes jump in the sink while the water is running and looks down the drain (water makes a funny sound down there). Water from the tap is pouring down her head, so she's like \"Hey cool, free water!\" and starts drinking it from that stream running down her neck.",
"My kitty LOOOOVES water.",
"My friends cat sleeps in the sink and will bother you until you turn the water on. Then he sits their until the sink fills up.",
"I asked my cat and he said because fuck water. ",
"The way it was explained to me like I was five was that cats' hair is dense, so when it's wet, it get heavy. They can swim and such but rather not b/c of the extra weight of the wet fur."
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2ne52j | what's happened in this ask reddit thread | I posted this last night and have no idea what's going on.
How did your "yeah, but I was really drunk" excuse work out for you?
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ne52j/elif_whats_happened_in_this_ask_reddit_thread/ | {
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3n4ae7 | why do razors get dull if they're made of metal? | I never understood this. In a science class way back whenever, I was told that materials had a certain hardness and could only be damaged by something of equal or greater hardness (for example, diamond is the hardest material and can only be cut by other diamonds.
So, at least i think, there's no way my skin/facial hair is harder than the metal blade, so why does the metal blade get dull? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n4ae7/eli5_why_do_razors_get_dull_if_theyre_made_of/ | {
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" > materials had a certain hardness and could only be damaged by something of equal or greater hardness\n\nAlthough generally true, it doesn't work that way all the time. To see this grab a flat piece of aluminum foil and try tearing it. If that foil were melted down and turned into a block you couldn't do a darn thing to it. But because of its shape, you can affect it with much softer materials. \n\nSame sort of thing applies to a razor blade. Hair's a lot softer than steel but that steel had been whittled to a very VERY fine edge. Over time that edge becomes degraded as it scrapes away at your skin, wearing unevenly.\n\nAnd eventually, unless you either restore the edge by stropping it or replacing the blade altogether in the case of a disposable, you wind up with little blobs of toilet paper all over your chin.\n\n(Same thing applies to kitchen knives by the way. Even just normal use wears away at the fine edge of the blade, which is why gourmet chefs sharpen VERY frequently.)\n",
"Human hair is almost as strong as copper.\n\n_URL_0_",
" > I was told that materials had a certain hardness and could only be damaged by something of equal or greater hardness (for example, diamond is the hardest material and can only be cut by other diamonds.\n\nMostly true.\n\nThere's two problems with that: one of which matters here. The one that doesn't matter is that hardness only applies to abrasion: you can damage some very hard things very easily by fracturing them.\n\nAs for abrasion: how \"hard\" something is measures how much it resists abrasion: if you grind two objects together, the harder object will get ground less.\n\nHowever, grinding does go both ways: if I have one thing that is 3 times as hard as another thing, and grind them together until I've ground a foot off of the softer object, I will have ground 4 inches off the harder object. I can't find the relative hardness of hair and steel, but suffice it to say, every hair you cut takes a (very) small amount of steel off of your razor: probably a fraction of the volume (cross-section of hair * width of blade)\n\nThe problem with razors and hair is that the razor needs to *cut* hair, which means that it doesn't take a lot of abrasion before you lose the edge; and one you lose the edge, your razor isn't cutting your hair any more."
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2zpift | how big is space? it can't just end after a certain point because something would have to be on the other side. it can't go on forever either... | This has always been something I have wondered in my head, because if "Space" was a bazillion sq miles (for arguments sake) something would have to be at the end of those bazillion sq miles. But also, something can't just go on forever, right?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zpift/eli5_how_big_is_space_it_cant_just_end_after_a/ | {
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"The universe is expanding, and we have no idea what else is out there, or what we might see at the edge of the universe. \n\nThe most popular hypothesis is the Multiverse. This states that there are many universes, all branching off of one another.\n\nBear in mind, the maps of the universe we have are actually maps of the observable universe. We have no clue how big the universe actually is. \n\nEdit: Welcome to the purpose of science; to understand and question things we don't know. Some mysteries, though, may never be solved. ",
"I don't think that question can be answered, yet. It's still not known.",
"Really, really, really big.\n\nFrom the wiki:\n > The part of the Universe that we can see, referred to as the observable universe, is about 91 billion light-years (28×10^9 pc) in diameter at the present time. The size of the whole universe is not known and may be infinite.",
"I like to think of it as a cell, maybe, with a membrane that's not exactly a wall, but more like a sac that you can push but can't break.\n\nSpace is weird and scary. Anytime I think of the universe, I feel like wtf why do we even bother existing? We make no real impact. There are stars 1000's of times bigger than our sun! WTF\n\nIt's very angsty.",
"I always liked how Douglas Adams put it. \"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.\"",
"One possibility is that space is closed, which is going to be hard to think about because it requires thinking in 4 dimensions. However, we can build up to this by looking at 2D surfaces in 3 dimensions.\n\nFor this we look at the surface of a sphere; say, the earth. We're *only* concerned with the surface itself, so as far as we know there's nothing on the inside. On this surface you could walk a \"straight line\" as \"the shortest distance through (2D) space between two points.\" An observer looking at this sphere could see that our straight lines are actually curved through 3D space, but as far as the inhabitants of the sphere are concerned there is no shorter path between the two points, so the \"straight\" line really is straight from their perspective. Contrast this with people living on a large plane, where their straight lines are still straight when observed from 3 dimensions.\n\nIf you're on this sphere then you may wonder what's outside of the surface. Not above or below it (that's the 3rd dimension, and we're only considering this from 2 dimensions), but what's beyond its edge. Thus, you set off to travel in one direction. You travel and travel and travel and eventually wind up where you started from. That's because a sphere is a closed shape. From a 3D observer this is obvious—you traveled in a circle—but for you you were always traveling in a straight line.\n\nYou could further find evidence that your space is curved if you went and started measuring some geometry. For example, in Euclidean geometry (i.e. geometry on a flat plane) the interior angles of a triangle always add to 180 degrees. You could draw triangles on the globe and measure their angles and find that this is not the case—for example, if you make a triangle with corners at the north pole, the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator, and the intersection of the meridian 90W and the equator then you have a triangle with 3 right angles. This is a symptom of curved space.\n\n*******\n\nComing back to our universe, we know that curvature of spacetime is possible and that it's intimately related to gravity. We can draw triangles and measure their angles and find that they are, in fact, not Euclidean. It's *possible* that this is the answer to what's on the outside of the universe, that it's just curved in on itself through a 4th dimension (which we know exists).\n\nHowever, unfortunately the observations don't support this nice and simple model. As far as we can tell the universe is \"flat\" on average with just little bumps here and there where large collections of matter rest. If this is the case then the universe is either larger than we can see, or even infinite. I expect this to be a problem that we get more information on in the next few decades, but for now it's still an open problem in science. ",
" > But also, something can't just go on forever, right??\n\nWhy not?\n\nAnswering your question with a question is kind of suspect but realistically, **we don't have an answer.** All we really know is that there is an \"edge\" to the observable universe. A \"bubble\" if you will. What we *don't* know is if there might be ANOTHER bubble outside our bubble expanding independently or if our bubble is *the* bubble (and if our bubble is \"curved\" or \"flat\"--if you reach the outer edge of a \"curved\" bubble, you end up on the other side, if you reach the outer edge of a \"flat\" bubble, you hit the outer wall and whatever would be there).\n\n**There really isn't an ELI5 that doesn't end with \"we don't know\" for this kind of question...mostly because the ELI45-with-a-doctorate-in-physics is still \"we don't know but we have some ideas\".**"
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1symcl | why do your palms sweat when in danger, like approaching the edge of a tall building, rather than dry out to have better grip? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1symcl/eli5_why_do_your_palms_sweat_when_in_danger_like/ | {
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"I think it is more of a side-effect of the rush of adrenaline and the resulting increase in heart rate, as a result of the fight-or-flight response. You need to be sweating for a looong time to get wrinkled palms, so not too useful in most emergency situations.\n"
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cu71v7 | why do our perceptions of videogame graphics change over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cu71v7/eli5_why_do_our_perceptions_of_videogame_graphics/ | {
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"Because it’s all relative. Obviously even back then you could’ve looked at a character in the game next to a real person and you’d never be confused. But it felt real because you had nothing else to really compare it to that was better. \n\nEven now as I believe we really are getting to a point where games will start to become indistinguishable from real life, I’m willing to bet you’ll look at games today 10 years from now and wonder why we were so impressed. I never noticed characters in games didn’t really have pores on their faces until I saw a character in game with details pores and was like “Wow, it’s crazy were at the point they can get that kind of detail.” Now I notice it when games don’t have that. Subconsciously there’s all kinds of details big and small you just notice now because you’re used to seeing them in games whereas you weren’t before."
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ehfiek | why are air conditioning units not. a ‘one size fits all’ thing? | Why does a window type AC have a difficult time cooling multiple rooms? Or even a single large room? Why is it better to use an inverter? Does it actually sense how large the room is?
Sorry for the barrage of questions. I have since moved into a larger home and it has inverters. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehfiek/eli5_why_are_air_conditioning_units_not_a_one/ | {
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"What an air conditioner actually does is move heat; ideally, it moves heat from the air in a closed room to the air outside. Any given unit can move X amount of heat, measured in BTUs. A bigger room has more total heat to move, so a smaller unit might not be able to move enough of the heat to be worth the electricity."
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1royox | how to deaf people dial 911 in an emergency and speak to police? can you text 911? i'm being serious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1royox/eli5_how_to_deaf_people_dial_911_in_an_emergency/ | {
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"Most have a [relay phone](_URL_1_) in their homes - they use an interpreter. [TTY](_URL_0_) is also available on mobile phones, landlines, and in 911 centers. ",
"I don't know how it works now but the phone company used to have a relay service for the deaf. My stepdaughter was born deaf and could not speak. She had a device called a TTY that was a keyboard that made noise as you type. You set the phone's handset on the TTY and you could converse with another TTY user. The relay service was an operator with a TTY. The operator would call whatever number you gave her and read what you typed. She also used the TTY to translate what was said to the deaf user.\n\nMany government agencies had a special phone number specifically for TTY users. Perhaps they still do.",
"You actually can text 911 now. However it is [very limited](_URL_0_) throughout the US currently with some mobile providers aiming to make it available in their coverage areas early 2014",
"In New Zealand you can text the emergency services if it is set up, I work for a phone company and deal with deaf customers infrequently",
"112 operator here, we have a fax-number where deaf people can send a fax to. They fill in a questionnaire with basic questions like 'what is the nature of your emergency, is anybody hurt, is anybody stuck, can you access the person, .... In all honesty, it's been there for years and I have never seen a fax coming in but it is a possibility. If something happens to a deaf person, they would quicker run out and ask somebody to call for them... ",
"In the UK, it's possible to [register](_URL_0_) to be able to send SMSes to 999. I'm not deaf, but I've registered: I theorise that it could hypothetically be useful in, say, a (hopefully unlikely) situation where I need to be able to summon the police without making any noise.",
"So, a lot of people have said TTY. What if you are outside of the house? I suppose dialing emergency services would be better than nothing, but is there a better way? Some people might have issues trying to speak their whereabouts.",
"When calling 911 in the United States, Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing (D/HH) people have several options (links to additional information are included as I go along):\n\n* **Video Relay Service (VRS) & Video Phones (VP) -** They can use VPs to call 911 immediately via VRS. Basically, the Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing person will dial 911 over the video phone, a certified sign language interpreter will respond first, and then dial 911 is dialed immediately via telephone line in a 3-way conference call (deaf person to interpreter to dispatch). The FCC also requires that all VP users have the address of wherever the VP unit is located (at home or at a business) registered on that account so that when dialing 911, the interpreter can immediately relay that address to the 911 dispatch operator after the victim has explained the emergency. The address being programmed into the VP is not only a time-saver when dealing with emergencies, but is also provides clear and direct communication when a Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing person, like anyone in an emergency situation, may be panicking and would likely \"stutter\" with their own signs or their minds go blank while trying to remember the address. For more information on how VPs & VRS work, you can check out **[Purple Communications](_URL_0_)** or **[Sorenson Communication](_URL_2_)**, which are two of the larger VRS providers in Florida (with Sorenson being the largest provider in the USA, I believe).\n\n* **TTY/TDD & Text Relay Services-** Just to avoid confusion: TTY and TDD are the same thing in this context, but have two different names for the same device. Some people know it better by one name over the other, so I included both, though I will refer to it as a TDD from here on out. Moving on, it's been pointed out that **[TTYs/TDDs](_URL_4_)** are an \"outdated technology.\" For the most part, this is true. A D/HH person who knows how to sign is more likely to be using the previously mentioned VPs to contact other D/HH friends/family members and using VRS services to call everyone else from doctors to employers to their local pizza delivery place. However, not all D/HH people know sign language. As such, these people have a tendency to rely on TDDs to communicate with one another or make their relay calls. Instead of a sign language interpreter relaying the calls, they will get an operator on another TDD who will then pipe through to the landline to whoever the D/HH person is calling and voice whatever is being typed on the screen for that D/HH person. The operator will then type everything being spoken back to the D/HH person as if they were speaking to that person directly. So, it’s the same idea as calling 911 on a VRS call, but using text instead of video for those who cannot sign.\n\n* **Captioned Telephones-** If you still use a landline telephone, you can use a **[CapTel](_URL_1_)** phone, which is a telephone with a large digital screen that allows a person who speaks but still has some degree of hearing loss (usually a Hard-of-Hearing person and not a Deaf person). Basically, you’ll call someone and a silent operator will automatically pick up while your outgoing number is being dialed. Using speech recognition software, everything being spoken by the person you’re calling will be captioned live on your CapTel phone (similar to subtitles on a TV) with the silent operator’s ONLY job being to correct errors made by the speech recognition software. Recently, Sprint created a **[CapTel mobile app](_URL_3_)** so people can use their smartphones to make captioned calls wirelessly as well and have their calls captioned on their smartphone screens instead of relying on a landline. Same principle as using the Text/Video Relay Services, but you won’t have an operator talking for you. You’ll be talking for yourself, so less delay in 911 calls.\n\n* **Text Messages -** This is still in the works. SOME cities in the United States have now begun doing text messages to 911 because they recognize that making a phone call in an emergency situation can give away your location if you’re a victim of attack and trying to hide (e.g., school shootings, muggings, home robberies, rape, etc.), so this is extremely beneficial not only to D/HH, but also to hearing people as well. The FCC has a whole page answering your questions on how **[Text-to-911](_URL_5_)** is being set up through mobile carriers and when they expect it to be up & running. However, as /u/MastersInDisasters points out: SMS, as it is defined now, is NOT a reliable protocol. If possible, use voice 911.\n\nI hope this information helps!\n\n**TL;DR -** We have several options: Videophones, TTY/TDDs, Captioned Telephones, and Text Messages (limited locations only for texts but slowly expanding).\n\nSource: I’m a Deaf Social Worker who currently works in the D/HH community and I’ve been D/HH all my life (born Hard-of-Hearing, then it gradually declined as I got older, now I consider myself Deaf).",
"Like all the other dispatchers here, TTY or a relay operator. The one time I had a deaf caller it was impossible to communicate through the relay operator. Trying to tell a woman how to give CPR to her baby through a video operator just does not work. In reality all you can really do for a deaf caller is to make them feel like something is being done until the FD/PD get there.",
"I have a question that relates to \"deaf\" people. Don't you mean mute, not deaf? I understand deaf people cannot hear but it does not necessarily mean that they cannot speak.",
"Some locations throughout the country now also allow texting for 911. Frederick, MD (located about 45 minutes north of Washington DC) is piloting a program because the Frederick is the location of the main campus for the Maryland School for the Deaf.\n\nHere is a great [local news article on the technology](_URL_0_). ",
"I was working as a 911 dispatcher early this year & amp; I got a call from a troubled man in southern Ontario. I was a VoIP operator so a lot of the calls didn't come with an address & amp; we'd have to get the caller to give us the address & amp; input into a system so we could transfer the call to the appropriate police service. I got this call one day, I never worked another shift. \n\nMe: 911, do you need police fire or ambulance?\n\nHim: It doesn't matter anymore. \n\nMe: 911! Do you need police, fire or ambulance?\n\nHim: I just don't want to live anymore, it's not worth it. \n\nMe: sir, Can i get your address please?\n\nHim: it just doesn't matter anymore. \n\nThen I heard a loud bang. I stayed on the phone for a couple more seconds trying to get this persons attention to no avail. \n\nI called his phone provider, got his address & amp; called the police. The police later called back requesting the 911 call tape & amp; let me know that they did find him dead. They asked me how I was & amp; if I wanted to talk to anyone. \nI asked my manager to go home, I called in the next day, got a new job the day after. \nI'll never forget those 4 minutes. ",
"Deaf girl here- had to call an ambulance for my friend about a year ago after she fell down the stairs and knocked herself out (it was laughs all round when she came round. she was fine, just hurt her head.) \nBasically I put my phone on speakerphone and spoke as clearly as I could explaining I was deaf and that I needed an ambulance to ____ address to help an unconscious person. I don't think they asked any questions but I could tell when someone different picked up the phone because there was a change in the tone of voice so after a few seconds I explained again. \n\nIt was tough and really panicky yeah but if you're loud and clear the emergency services usually know what to do from there. Sometimes... :/ ",
"CODA (children of deaf adults) here. in an emergency case my parents would just dial the number and yell into the phone (regardless if there is already an officer or not on the other side). the main problem is, almost all deaf ppl aren't able to speak clearly, so foreign/unknown person hardly understand them\n\nps.: sorry for mistakes im from germany :)",
"If you ring the emergency services and breath into the phone but not say anything they will ask you if you can hear them and if you can then press any number, they will then ask if you are in danger or if somebody is in your house, if their is then press any number and so on.",
"Living because of 911. I live 500 miles from my family. I had an accidental overdose. Yes people those do happen. By luck I had called my sister and passed out during the conversation. She called 911, gave my address and an ambulance was dispatched in less than 5 minutes. 911 is awesome.",
"I actually am a relay agent, I dictate phone calls for the deaf/hard of hearing that have our service. Our company provides a special phone for deaf/hard of hearing people that allows them to read their phone calls instead of just relying on listening.\n\n",
"I've had a couple deaf people brought to my emergency room that were picked up near pay phones. Both just called 911 and then moaned. Ambulance came lickety-split. ",
"I was employed as a relay operator for deaf people using TTYs or internet devices.\n\n We had a very strict policy regarding transparency. We were only allowed to speak verbatim what the person was typing, and we would relay the voice back into text form exactly as it was spoken, unless we had to interrupt to explain the process of the call - and then we always had to announce that we were interjecting.\n\n During a 911 call, we were required to give much more information about the call to the dispatcher, and there was no need to enforce transparency. I probably handled a few calls to 911 that were legitimate, but most calls to 911 were fraudulent. We were required to process them anyway. Things are much different now.\n",
"How to deaf people dial 911??!\n\n"
]
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[
"http://www.911.gov/911-issues/serving.html",
"http://www.fcc.gov/guides/711-telecommunications-relay-service"
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[],
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],
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"http://purple.us/",
"http://captel... | ||
29rff7 | why i can shine a colored laser on a different colored object. | So, how I understand colors is that if I shine a white light on a banana all light except the yellow light becomes heat and the yellow light gets reflected.
But if I point a red laser on a banana all of the red light doesn't get absorbed, instead most of it gets reflected, why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29rff7/eli5_why_i_can_shine_a_colored_laser_on_a/ | {
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" > if I shine a white light on a banana all light except the yellow light becomes heat and the yellow light gets reflected.\n\nThis isn't strictly true. There is a *range* of frequencies that are reflected, centered on yellow, but extending slightly into the orange and green (with less reflection and more absorption the further you get from yellow). So the banana will reflect red, too, but at reduced intensity.",
"A yellow banana doesn't absorb *all* the light except for yellow. It just absorbs some of the red, some of the blue, some of the green, etc. A white light has equal amounts of all colors, but the banana diminishes the intensity of the red, the blue, etc. So your eye sees the reflection, with normal-intensity yellow and lower-than-normal intensity everything-but-yellow, and it says \"oh, OK, yellow\".\n\nWhen you shine a red laser on a banana, it diminishes the intensity of the red. But the red was so intense to begin with that the reflection is still red. It's a slightly darker red than if you pointed your laser at a white wall, but there's still enough red that you eye will say \"oh, OK, red\"."
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kc7xf | where do ethics come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kc7xf/eli5_where_do_ethics_come_from/ | {
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"Ethics are a set of guidelines that are derived from single or multiple moral philosophies. Mostly, because it's derived from moral philosophies, it is meant to understand the relationship between good and evil, right and wrong. \n\nSome principles of ethics include;\n > Aristotle's Golden Mean\n\n > Kant's Categorical Imperative\n\n > Judeo-Christian philosophy relating to the Agape Principle\n\nUsing these principles, or others gathered, in my communication ethics class we used a [potterbox](/_URL_0_) as a model for making an ethical decision. \n\nIn the first box, you list the facts and definition at hand with the goal of displaying only facts without bias or misrepresentation. \n\nIn the second box you referencing the values in question and understanding how they come into play in a specific ethical situation.\n\nIn the third box, you use principles (like Aristotle's Golden Mean) as models of ethical reasoning that may apply to the situation at hand.\n\nIn the final box, the decision makers loyalties come into play. The decision maker must identify his/her allegiances and weight the actions/reactions that will occur with each possible ethical decision.\n\nThis is just the tip of the ice-burg in terms of ethics, however. Ethics is a broad term for many different philosophies, beliefs, methodologies and opinions.",
"I think that the best explanation comes from a book titled \"Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics\" which takes a single phrase that would explain each ethical system and its origin. For instance:\n\nKantianism - It's your duty\n\nUtilitarianism - the greatest good for the greatest number\n\nand so on.",
"Humans are social creatures. We live and work and play with each other. We need rules that protect everybody from everybody else. These rules are sometimes called laws or ethics. When you talk about the collective rules of a society and of personal interaction, you are talking about ethics.",
"Ethics come from impulses to harmonize oneself within cooperative social environments. We don't normally kill people who are temporary blocking our walking path in order speed up our walking because we acknowledge some level of value in others. This is hardwired as **empathy** in our brains.\n\nBecause humans are mentally sophisticated we have elaborated on this and created abstract rules like a sense of fairness. We don't steal from other people, and we allow others to exist in conditions that we feel we want to live in ourselves. Our brains are highly wired to our emotions to ensure we support these ideas by how we feel about them. However, in societies where not everyone follows the rules we make larger social agreements about these rules in explicit articulations of them, such as laws, or sayings \"do unto others and you would have others do unto you\". These rules, essentially, constitute what are ethics.\n\nThere are, by now, dozens of video recordings of orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees engaging in a very empathetic behaviors ([mourning the dead](_URL_1_), more [mourning the dead](_URL_0_), [respect for the dead](_URL_2_), [saving a duck from drowning](_URL_3_)). Its fairly clear that pure empathy and sense of fair play is not a human-specific behavior. But these are our closes animal relatives, so we can be sure that we **inherited** our core sense of ethics from our common ancestors with them.\n",
"A long time ago some people lived in tribes and some other people did their own thing. For the tribe people, generally everyone did better when they worked together, did things for the good of everyone, or when they did good things to others.\n\nThe non tribe people died out but the tribe people kept on. And we have kept their rules of being good and treating other's fairly with us, in one form or another.",
"The short answer is evolution. This, however, raises the question \"why was having ethics a reproductive advantage?\" I'll do my best to give my understanding of this at the simplest level I can:\n\nIn the ancestral environment, people had the choice of behaving 'nice' and working together with the rest of their tribe, or behaving 'naughty' and working for their own self alone. People in the tribe who play nice don't let people they know to play naughty to play with them. This means that people with a reputation of playing naughty don't get to have children since the nice people won't let them. This is, essentially, why most people are nice - because more nice people had nice children than naughty people had naughty children.\n\nNow, this only explains why people who get caught being naughty don't reproduce well. How do we explain why people who play naughty when they think they can get away with playing naughty don't reproduce well? The answer is simple: they were wrong about getting away with it. At least enough times that \"play nice, even when you think you can get away with playing naughty\" is the dominate trait. The feeling of \"it's wrong to steal this, even though I think I can get away with it\" is how the evolutionary strategy of \"I should play nice, even when I think I could get away with playing naughty\" is implemented.\n\nI hope I'm making at least a little sense with this. It's not exactly standard thinking.\n\nI'm paraphrasing an idea I heard somewhere in [here](_URL_0_), but I can't remember exactly where it was.",
"Ethics are a set of guidelines that are derived from single or multiple moral philosophies. Mostly, because it's derived from moral philosophies, it is meant to understand the relationship between good and evil, right and wrong. \n\nSome principles of ethics include;\n > Aristotle's Golden Mean\n\n > Kant's Categorical Imperative\n\n > Judeo-Christian philosophy relating to the Agape Principle\n\nUsing these principles, or others gathered, in my communication ethics class we used a [potterbox](/_URL_0_) as a model for making an ethical decision. \n\nIn the first box, you list the facts and definition at hand with the goal of displaying only facts without bias or misrepresentation. \n\nIn the second box you referencing the values in question and understanding how they come into play in a specific ethical situation.\n\nIn the third box, you use principles (like Aristotle's Golden Mean) as models of ethical reasoning that may apply to the situation at hand.\n\nIn the final box, the decision makers loyalties come into play. The decision maker must identify his/her allegiances and weight the actions/reactions that will occur with each possible ethical decision.\n\nThis is just the tip of the ice-burg in terms of ethics, however. Ethics is a broad term for many different philosophies, beliefs, methodologies and opinions.",
"I think that the best explanation comes from a book titled \"Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics\" which takes a single phrase that would explain each ethical system and its origin. For instance:\n\nKantianism - It's your duty\n\nUtilitarianism - the greatest good for the greatest number\n\nand so on.",
"Humans are social creatures. We live and work and play with each other. We need rules that protect everybody from everybody else. These rules are sometimes called laws or ethics. When you talk about the collective rules of a society and of personal interaction, you are talking about ethics.",
"Ethics come from impulses to harmonize oneself within cooperative social environments. We don't normally kill people who are temporary blocking our walking path in order speed up our walking because we acknowledge some level of value in others. This is hardwired as **empathy** in our brains.\n\nBecause humans are mentally sophisticated we have elaborated on this and created abstract rules like a sense of fairness. We don't steal from other people, and we allow others to exist in conditions that we feel we want to live in ourselves. Our brains are highly wired to our emotions to ensure we support these ideas by how we feel about them. However, in societies where not everyone follows the rules we make larger social agreements about these rules in explicit articulations of them, such as laws, or sayings \"do unto others and you would have others do unto you\". These rules, essentially, constitute what are ethics.\n\nThere are, by now, dozens of video recordings of orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees engaging in a very empathetic behaviors ([mourning the dead](_URL_1_), more [mourning the dead](_URL_0_), [respect for the dead](_URL_2_), [saving a duck from drowning](_URL_3_)). Its fairly clear that pure empathy and sense of fair play is not a human-specific behavior. But these are our closes animal relatives, so we can be sure that we **inherited** our core sense of ethics from our common ancestors with them.\n",
"A long time ago some people lived in tribes and some other people did their own thing. For the tribe people, generally everyone did better when they worked together, did things for the good of everyone, or when they did good things to others.\n\nThe non tribe people died out but the tribe people kept on. And we have kept their rules of being good and treating other's fairly with us, in one form or another.",
"The short answer is evolution. This, however, raises the question \"why was having ethics a reproductive advantage?\" I'll do my best to give my understanding of this at the simplest level I can:\n\nIn the ancestral environment, people had the choice of behaving 'nice' and working together with the rest of their tribe, or behaving 'naughty' and working for their own self alone. People in the tribe who play nice don't let people they know to play naughty to play with them. This means that people with a reputation of playing naughty don't get to have children since the nice people won't let them. This is, essentially, why most people are nice - because more nice people had nice children than naughty people had naughty children.\n\nNow, this only explains why people who get caught being naughty don't reproduce well. How do we explain why people who play naughty when they think they can get away with playing naughty don't reproduce well? The answer is simple: they were wrong about getting away with it. At least enough times that \"play nice, even when you think you can get away with playing naughty\" is the dominate trait. The feeling of \"it's wrong to steal this, even though I think I can get away with it\" is how the evolutionary strategy of \"I should play nice, even when I think I could get away with playing naughty\" is implemented.\n\nI hope I'm making at least a little sense with this. It's not exactly standard thinking.\n\nI'm paraphrasing an idea I heard somewhere in [here](_URL_0_), but I can't remember exactly where it was."
]
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8yl2pR1EIM"
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... | ||
4wqzlk | how can one tap the undersea cables with a submarine? | Don't they have to cut the cables to be able to monitor the communications? Can they do that at great depths without anyone noticing? (an interesting article: _URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wqzlk/eli5_how_can_one_tap_the_undersea_cables_with_a/ | {
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"Communications through cables work via electricity, which generates a magnetic field that can be monitored and interpreted without needing to physically cut the cable.\n\nIt is an involved process requiring submarines and divers to place an underwater tap in the first place, and as you get deeper you then need specialised deep water equipment (think the submarines that found the titanic). \n\nSince [Operation Ivy Bells](_URL_0_) (that perhaps would still be going to this day if it hadn't been betrayed) the confidence countries have in the security of undersea cables is probably diminished, with anything sent on them being heavily encrypted, making a tap less successful at yielding information. ",
"I saved this for while to see if you'd get any responses. It is as /u/Spinnnn says for wirelines. An induction clamp is placed over the cable that reads the magnetic changes in the cable. Operation Ivy Bells was the first iteration, and had some limitations that needed to be hashed out.\n\nWhile it did work, it recorded on tape and the battery was limited. They ended up going to a hard drive setup and a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. This allowed the clamp to always be powered and have a simple plug in to get the intelligence take.\n\nWith the use of undersea fiber the challenge was met by parking a sub next to a regeneration point and tapping right into that point. "
]
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"http://www.techworm.net/2016/08/u-s-using-submarines-hack-countries.html"
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[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells"
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dweyhf | why does forcing a large company to break up prevent it from being anti-competitive? can't they still pledge to coordinate with each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dweyhf/eli5_why_does_forcing_a_large_company_to_break_up/ | {
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"No, coordination is illegal--it's literally the foundation of antitrust law. Section 1 of the Sherman Act provides that\n\n > Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.\n\nThe purpose of breaking up a large company is to force the smaller pieces to compete with each other.",
"Technically yes, but that’s collusion so there are then other laws at play working to prevent that anti competitive behaviour. Multiple smaller companies also means its more difficult for any individual company to exert monopolistic control over other companies.",
"It splits up capital. One notable way that microsoft, and later google, would stifle competition is to buy out fledgling companies, or just dump a ton of resources into a competing product to drive newly formed companies under. When a company is split up, this money just isn't available. \n\nThere are laws against price fixing - you can price fix all day long within your own company, but if you do it across competing companies, that is often illegal. Breaking up a company allows the government to prevent price fixing.\n\nIt becomes cheaper to get controlling (or at least voting) shares in a company. This, in theory, means a local wealthy person could buy stock in their local part of the company and have a meaningful vote. (this is less applicable in a case like Google).",
"Slightly off topic (or maybe not?).. Why is anti trust called anti trust? Is it because people don't trust big companies? I have no clue with this sort of thing lol"
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9w1bua | why does bread taste so good?! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w1bua/eli5_why_does_bread_taste_so_good/ | {
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"The enzymes in your saliva are very good at beginning the process of breaking down bread's simple starches into yummy sugars."
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3d6632 | what's the connection between dimmed lights and romance/intimacy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d6632/eli5_whats_the_connection_between_dimmed_lights/ | {
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"I think people are less self conscious because the other person cannot see, what they perceive as their flaws. As well, when the lights go down, traditionally it is time to go to bed!",
"One of the clues that someone likes someone/something is a dilation of the pupils (big black parts of the eyes). Low light mimics the same response of the eyes because they also grow larger to let more light in when it's darker."
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3p4cgo | what is the point of life imprisonment? | If a person is found guilty of a heinous crime, why are they condemned to spend the rest of their life in a little room? Discounting inflated expenses of execution, how is life imprisonment a preferable option to death or to a lengthy (but not lifelong) sentence?
You've just got a useless guy in a box for decades. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p4cgo/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_life_imprisonment/ | {
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"I think the main argument is that they want to remove that person from society (if they are a danger to others, for example), but at the same time believe the government cannot have the power to kill a person.",
"Because the justice system is not without its flaws and innocent people have gotten sentenced to the death penalty.\n\nLife imprisonment isn't fun, but if you find out a few years down the line that someone was convicted while they are not guilty, you can release them and you can try to help them rebuild their life. If you find out someone was innocent five years after you gave them a lethal injection, you can't dig them up and make them alive again.",
"It's for people's protections. The court and the public deem the offender to be unfit and unredeemable. Often times if they are not bad enough they take pity and give them a life sentence. \n\nSo if you have a deadly virus and you put it in CDC lockup you don't release it 40 years later hoping it won't kill anyone. You keep it locked up forever because it's never going to not try and hurt someone. ",
"Death is final and if it later turns out that the person was actually innocent you can't do anything for him anymore. However, if he is merely incarcerated then you can release him and perhaps offer monetary compensation for the wrongful conviction and years he had to spend behind bars."
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qp458 | a request for the eli5 mods. | I love this subreddit and boy has it grown since its inception. But now that the size is relatively large, I think more stern rules are needed for posts. My main complaint is that I see the same ELI5 questions over and over again. It seems every day someone wants to know what fascism is, what torrents are, and what is going on with Greece. So mods, I ask you, is there a way you can filter posts. It doesn't have to be anything over the top but let's do something.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qp458/a_request_for_the_eli5_mods/ | {
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"Maybe if they implemented some kind of user-bases voting system, where good questions can be voted up and bad questions be voted down?",
"What Reddit could really use is the \"is this your question\" page stackoverflow has before you can post. \n\nWhat is does, if say you ask \"What is fascism?\" is display the 5 highest voted threads on fascism, and then ask if your question is substantially different. \n\nOf course, idiots will herp derp their way to the \"post anyway\" button, this would require a hefty code change, it would have to be subreddit specific, bla bla bla.",
"Most of us know what the habitually repeated questions are. If I see Schrödinger's cat one more time I am going to vomit. It is annoying that before posting some people never do a quick search. I would say in order to not over-engineer or redesign any aspect of reddit maybe this sub-redit just needs more moderators that will delete this type postings.\n\nNot all repeat questions are bad. For some the answers could use refreshing. For some others it is not always bad so see it back in circulation if it has been a long time in between. It is the habitually recurring ones that are annoying.",
"Mods,\n\nI spend quite a lot of time on this subreddit during the work week. If another mod is needed to remove posts (and if that's the route you guys even want to take with this problem), please let me know, I'd love to volunteer. You can PM [CatholicGuy](_URL_0_) for a reference, since I help him mod /r/HarryPotter.\n\nAlternatively, maybe you can put a really giant, red notice on the submission page that says something to the effect of: \"Please search old posts before submitting\" with a link to an ELI5 post on how to search for old posts? It wouldn't eradicate the problem completely, but it may help.",
"This strikes me as being similar to the debate surrounding reposts on the frontpage in general. There are good arguments to both sides there, but I feel the situation is somewhat unique for subreddits like ELI5 or AskScience.\n\n\nI do not mind reposts on the frontpage. I browse the frontpage for instant gratification---pictures of cats and funny gifs. Typically, what is funny to me once is still funny to me a week later. (Perhaps my tolerance to saturation is higher, but I think my point stands.) Hence, while I would like to see newer material on the frontpage, occasional reposts do not deter me at all.\n\n\nHowever, when I browse ELI5, I am seeking to learn new topics. Thanks to the community, there are many concepts that are elucidated tremendously well. The distinction here (as opposed to the frontpage) is that once I learn a concept, I have no use for reposts---I already understand it well by virtue of having read the repost---whereas a repost of a cat on roomba on the frontpage will always be funny to me.\n\n\nLastly, this does not address the fact that perhaps new browsers (not Firefox, but people who browse) have not seen the reposts in ELI5 and might appreciate them. The popular counterargument is the existence of the search engine. Yes, I agree, but I think as it stands, neither the new browsers nor the new posters are properly incentivized to use the search engine. It is so much easier to click a button to post something, rather than burdening oneself with the task of verifying that the post is indeed new. (This problem is more general and applies to other subreddits.)\n\n\nSo, perhaps restructuring of the system for this subreddit is in order, but would reddit be amenable to providing unique treatment to ELI5? I doubt it.",
"It was this sort of post that made me leave AskScience. The community does a perfectly fine job of moderating content. If a question is commonly asked, hide it and move on. Please please *please* **please** do not start with the heavy handed moderation in this sub. \n\nThere will always be reposts. This is a deficiency of the way reddit is built, not a deficiency in the way a sub is moderated. \n\n**Downvote, Hide, Move on.**",
"\"Explain to me because I'm too lazy to google\".\n",
"Just chiming in to let everyone know that this issue is definitely on our radar, and we're considering ways to politely remind people to search before they post. We're aware our rapid growth has some side effects, but we do strive to keep this place friendly and open. \n\nThanks for all the good ideas.",
"I'd like the moderators to start being more strict. I understand that it can be awkward moderating heavily because you don't want to come across like overzealous moderators or think it's more fair to just let it all happen democratically or whatever, but you're moderators - don't be afraid to moderate. Otherwise the subreddit'll get worse and further away from the original purpose as more and more people come.\n\nEver notice that /r/AskReddit was supposed to be 'for thought-provoking, inspired questions', but totally isn't? Take a page from /r/AskScience's book and follow their example - don't hesitate to remove stuff that's shit, otherwise people'll continue to complain about the quality of the subreddit and it'll still continue to do shitty things like all the other subreddits. Then we have to deal with all the drama about the 'direction of the subreddit' and you moderators have to make repetitive futile pleas like this.\n\nSo, shitty jokes, irrelevant answers, bad answers, biased answers, bad questions, biased questions, repetitive questions, useless feuds about the definition of 'ELI5', transparently disguised DAE posts, and all other such uninteresting and uneducational shite, you should just mercilessly remove it all so we and you don't have to look at it, talk about it, have these threads, and distract from the original purpose and goal of the subreddit, which is just learning interesting stuff."
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331nj1 | why do buses vibrate when idle but not when moving | Why do big buses and cars ex. charter buses vibrate when they are sitting still with the engine on but when they accelerate the vibrating stops. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/331nj1/eli5why_do_buses_vibrate_when_idle_but_not_when/ | {
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"Engines are not in perfect balance at every rpm. And can not be in perfect balance at every rpm (it would defy physics). So what engineers do is aim to balance the engine at the rpms the engine will run the most at throughout its entire life. Which are the rpms the vehicle would normally cruise at. "
]
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[]
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cbdsm9 | how do android apps collect data after we deny them permissions ? | ref: [More than 1,000 Android apps harvest data even after you deny permissions](_URL_0_)
[1] once we deny permission, how do the apps still have access to those data?
[2] what does the "deny permission" setting actually do?
[3] is it one of those "fake switch" things that do nothing internally ?
[4] was google aware of this before the FTC mention? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbdsm9/eli5_how_do_android_apps_collect_data_after_we/ | {
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"1. After skimming TFA, it seems that these apps work around not being allowed to access location data by doing things like reading the location tags in photos if they have access to those or using GeoIP-like databases to locate the phone's IP address when connecting via Wi-Fi. Others simply scan through files where other programs that *have* the relevant permission store the stuff they want to know if they are in a location the malicious program can access.\n2. It does just what it says it does: When a program wants to e.g. read your location, it asks the operating system \"Hey, what's our current location?\". This will either result in an actual location or a \"nope, you're not allowed to know that\" (or a prompt to the user of which of those two to send). But that has no impact on using sneakier methods of obtaining said data.\n3. Nope, they work perfectly fine. It's other security measures that are failing here (mainly read permissions per app). But those are far harder to implement consistently and without them being a pain in the ass for the user.\n4. Probably not those specific issues.",
"Essentially, your data is inside a big guarded castle with a moat and portcullis and soldiers on the ramparts, but a sneak-thief has found an unguarded way in through the sewers.\n\nOn Android, there is an \"official\" way to request data, and that is strongly locked down. If you say DENY, then the app *doesn't* get the data.\n\nFor example, `Contacts.lookupContact()` will always return \"permission denied\" to an app unless it lists `READ_CONTACTS` in its manifest, and calls `ActivityCompat.requestPermissions()` and the user says ALLOW.\n\nApps *cannot* get around this mechanism... so they have resorted to sneaky actions. They've found data they *can* get, in ways Google did not expect could be abused.\n\n* If you grant access to one app, e.g. to read your phone state, it will save that private data onto the SD card so other apps can read it\n* If you grant access to your photos, but not your location, the app will scan through all your photos to see if any of them have a location saved in them\n* They found a low-level API call in the Linux kernel that is not locked down by the Android permission system, and can give them your device's MAC address (ioctl(SIOCGIFHWADDR))\n* They found the Linux file `/proc/net/arp` is not locked down, so they can read MAC addresses from that\n\nThe researchers disclosed this to Google before the FTC presentation, and Google have responded by [fixing everything in the next Android release](_URL_0_), but either can't or won't fix it in older versions of Android, because plugging these leaks would also stop thousands of non-privacy-invading apps from working.\n\nThe linked article didn't like to the actual research, which is here: _URL_1_"
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2z5pqe | when you take pain meds like aspirin or ibuprofen, does it go treat the pain at the location or is it a general dulling of pain in your whole body? | Edit: Thanks for all the great answers guys! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z5pqe/eli5_when_you_take_pain_meds_like_aspirin_or/ | {
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"It's the whole body. So called \"targeted\" pain killers are a marketing ploy. If fact a few companies are currently in trouble in Australia for false advertising related to this. ",
"Yes, they do go straight to the site of injury but not by their own design. When a cell is in distress it produces prostaglandin, which long story short, induces the sensation of pain. Aspirin binds one of the pre coursers of prostaglandin and prevents it from sending the pain signal. \n\nFun fact: one of the chemicals involved in blood clotting also produces prostaglandin which is how aspirin can work as a blood thinner and is frequently taken by people at risk for heart attack (caused by a blood clot in one of the coronary arteries). Aspirin can't differentiate between the two prostaglandin pre coursers and blocks both (COX1/COX2, if you're curious).",
"Once NSAIDs such as aspirin are absorbed, they are widely distributed throughout the body. The drug doesn't all localize to the site of inflammation, and it's not as though there is some substance that binds the drug and carries back only to the injured cells. Unlike opioids which act centrally, however, NSAIDs act locally to reduce pain and inflammation by inhibiting an enzyme (COX-2) which produces inflammatory compounds. COX-2 itself isn't a prostaglandin precursor, but rather an enzyme.",
"The medications you're thinking of are distributed to the entire body (more or less). Aspirin and ibuprofen are both NSAIDs, which act by blocking the production of prostaglandins, which are responsible for pain and inflammation. You only notice a difference at the site of the pain, because that's where you were hurting in the first place. The distribution of these drugs (and others) is the reason that drugs have unintended side effects in many parts of the body.",
"So, NSAID's, COX inhibitors, etc. will be distributed throughout your body after absorption and act anywhere they can. The localization happens before you even take the drug. Inflammation and pain are responses that are (usually) only activated at a particular site, which means that, even though, aspirin or ibuprofen can act anywhere, they will only act where an inflammatory response has been elicited. So, the answer to your question is yes and no, depending on how you look at it...\n\nsource: medical student who needs to be studying for that quiz tomorrow. thanks a LOT reddit...",
"Pain and pain medication have been discussed several times here and in /r/askscience. The answers in this thread look good, but here's a few related links if you would like to read more:\n\n* [What are headaches and how/why does Tylenol cure them?](_URL_0_)\n* [Are there very efficient and higly used drugs that we have no idea how do they work?](_URL_4_)\n* [ELI5: What the difference between Tylenol, Aspirin, non-aspirin, ibuprofen or anything in the headache relief/pain relief department?](_URL_5_)\n* [What is the difference between Advil, Tylenol, and ibuprofen and how exactly do they alleviate pain in the body?](_URL_2_)\n* [What's really going on when someone gets a migraine?](_URL_3_)\n* [ELI5: When I get a headache, what is actually hurting? Is it my skull, my brain, tissue? What??](_URL_1_)\n\nThese links were recommended by my topic analysis engine. I hope you find them useful!",
"Taking medicine like ibuprofen doesn't eliminate the pain, but makes it so you don't feel it. \n\nYour proteins have a site in which they can an accept a ligand (A signal that will communicate what it wants the cell to do). When you take ibuprofen, those sites that would usually take the signal of pain will be blocked. Since the cell never received a single that indicated pain, it won't undergo a signal transduction pathway that would have ultimately given the feeling of pain. "
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"http://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19y45h/what_is... | |
2bgy00 | why does it feel like you aren't getting enough air when it's hot outside? | You know on really hot days it feels like you aren't getting enough oxygen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bgy00/eli5_why_does_it_feel_like_you_arent_getting/ | {
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"I think it mostly has to do with the concentration of oxygen you inhale. You see at higher temperatures things expand. At lower temperatures things contract and get closer together so during the summer you are breathing in less oxygen due to the air being expanded. "
]
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[]
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72xlgu | whyvare there so many different producers on movie? | As I watch the opening or closing credits I a movie, I don't know why there are so many different producers. What do they all do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72xlgu/eli5_whyvare_there_so_many_different_producers_on/ | {
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"Producers encompass a wide range of jobs. Sometimes all it takes is money to get the credit. But there's line producers who do paperwork and creative producers who give notes on the script or in the editing room. There's also multiple companies working on a film for development, producing, editing, and distribution and they all have their own folks doing various tasks. It's not possible to break this all down here, but I hope that gives you a bit of information.",
"Producers have a big range of responsibilities and so depending on the movie and who is involve different people may be involved in the role. You could have several co-producer that work as a team sharing the load for the whole movie. You could also have specialised producer that take care of a particular activity under the producer of the movie.\n\nHere a list of different type of producers and their jobs.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
]
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6ktgjx | why does it happen that we tend to remember some words not by their meaning, but by the context they were used in? | more often than not, this is exactly the thing I have done when I want to recall certain words. I am able to remember a word by the context where it was used, but not by its actual meaning.
PS English is my second language.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ktgjx/eli5_why_does_it_happen_that_we_tend_to_remember/ | {
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"That's how you naturally learn language. The meaning of many words aren't particularly helpful because to understand the meaning you need to have sufficient past context\n\nLet's take sit as an example. What's the meaning of \"to sit\"?\n\n > to rest on the buttocks or haunches sit in a chair —often used with down\n\nThat's pretty hard to explain to someone who may not know many of those words, but if you're told \"sit!\" and they point to a chair, you can understand what they mean even if you don't know that \"sit!\" is the imperative form of to sit simply because you understand context from the chair. This is how children first learn languages"
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2vfb2x | with the mlb looking to play games in cuba, would defectors be arrested immediately? | The Red Sox and Orioles are looking into playing an exhibition game in Cuba next month, which I think is awesome for many different reasons. My question is, would a player like Rusney Castillo, who defected last year, be arrested immediately upon stepping foot in Cuba? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vfb2x/eli5_with_the_mlb_looking_to_play_games_in_cuba/ | {
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"Probably not. Talk about setting back relations 70 years...Cuba isn't stupid. ",
"I would imagine there will be an agreement in place prior to the game that would prevent such a thing. It would be absolutely political suicide for Cuba to try and arrest them, especially when the US seems to be on the brink of patching things up with them and making the entire issue of \"defection\" a thing of the past. "
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2is6g8 | why does the conductor of an orchestra gesticulate so much? | Skip forward to 1:35 [here](_URL_0_), for example.
What is the purpose of having a person signalling an orchestra or choir when they already have musical notes to guide them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2is6g8/eli5_why_does_the_conductor_of_an_orchestra/ | {
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"For each instrumentalist, there are a million and one things to think of for every note that you're playing.\n\n* Am I playing the right note?\n* Am I in tune with everyone else?\n* Am I articulating this correctly? Harshly accented, or soft and tenuto?\n* How's my volume? The page says forte (loud), am I loud enough? Too loud?\n* What's the focus right now? Am I important, or is it the violins? Am I covering up the trombone's part?\n* What's the mood of the piece? If it's really sad and I'm playing very brightly, it's going to sound weird.\n\nThe list goes on and on. The conductor uses body language, gestures, and signals to remind the instrumentalists of what's important at any given time, so they can focus their own thought on what's important.\n\nIf the conductor's motions are big and sweeping, and he's pointing at the trumpets, they'll naturally play loud, grand, and bright, and the players can focus on their own personal things: tuning, intonation, articulation, and other technical things. \n\nSame thing if the conductor is making short, quick motions, and signaling the flutes by pushing his hand down. The flutes know \"we need to play soft and staccato because that's what this piece needs, and also, we're a little too loud.\" Once that's taken care of, they can focus on their own musicality."
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1kcr8c | why is it legal to smoke in the uk at 16 but the legal age to purchase tobacco products is 18? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kcr8c/eli5_why_is_it_legal_to_smoke_in_the_uk_at_16_but/ | {
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"because the legal age to buy cigarettes in the UK was 16 until maybe 5/6 years ago, they only changed the age to buy cigarettes because it would take up less time to pass the law and would be easier to enforce ",
"Technically its legal to smoke at any age but you cant actually purchase them until you are 18. Its also an offence to knowingly buy an age restricted product for someone you know to be underage. UK law has loads of oddities like this :-)"
]
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a3kvuk | how in the world does a cd, mp3 player, or any other sort of digital music player take data and turn it into sound? | I think I understand how data is stored... But how does it go from data to sound?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3kvuk/eli5_how_in_the_world_does_a_cd_mp3_player_or_any/ | {
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"Remember, it starts out as sound. When it's digitized, it is compressed using an algorithm. To turn it back into sound, the process is simply reversed. It is decoded using the same algorithm.\n\nIt's also important to remember that all sound is simply vibration at varying frequencies, so encoding that into something mathematical isn't that hard. Ergo, decoding it isn't that hard, either.",
"The music is a collection of sound waves, vibrations of the air. Recording music consists in storing information about the shape of those vibrations. When you play the music you pass those information to a speaker that vibrates generating the same air vibrations you previously stored.",
"You ever use an old version of MS Paint? Remember how if you made a \"circle\" if you look real close, you can see that its not a perfect circle but is very edgy, like a bunch of rectangles going around in a circle? It's the same deal, but the circle is a waveform and the \"edges\" are the sample rate (digital audio uses a sample rate). a computer uses a DAC (digital to analog converter) to convert these \"edges\" (basic binary essentially) to make waveforms which are then sent to a speaker to make actual sound. Hope this helps!\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT: moreso on the sample rate, standard sample rate is 44.1khz, or 44,100 hz. When you lower the sample rate drastically then the sound becomes much more \"pixelated\" or \"glitchy\" like the sound is coming from an old super nintendo or something. A common audio effect that does this is called a \"bit-crusher\", and this is why older video games audio used more basic waveforms like a square wave, because they generally were 8-bit as opposed to, say mp3 which is 16-bit. "
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1gwtqh | why does is matter if i'm using encryption/privacy measures if all the traffic is kept by my isp anyways? | To further explain, let's say I'm with Verizon as an ISP. Doesn't all my browsing and my search requests go through their servers before it hits google or some encrypted service? And if so, doesn't that mean that they can provide the NSA a copy of my traffic, regardless of what service I use to make it anonymous?
Also, I realize that encryption prevents them from seeing the content of my traffic, but only for so long. I'm sure they have enough computing power to break most common encryption methods in a decent amount of time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gwtqh/eli5_why_does_is_matter_if_im_using/ | {
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"It's encrypted on your computer before it crosses their systems, not after, so they can't see it. \n\n\nAlso, they DON'T have the power to break modern algorithms - they would need more computers than there are atoms on earth. ",
" > I'm sure they have enough computing power to break most common encryption methods in a decent amount of time.\n\nThe NSA probably does not have the computing power to modern encryption, especially if you use something better than SSL.\n\nMore importantly, they don't have the resources to break *everyone's* encryption. The more people use encryption, the harder it is from them to figure out what needs to be decrypted."
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2ivolt | how come i factory reset my phone, downloaded the same apps but had 7gb more space. | Before I factory reset I had ~100 photos and I frequently deleted the cache on all my apps as well as text messages, so where did this extra 7gb of space come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ivolt/eli5_how_come_i_factory_reset_my_phone_downloaded/ | {
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"There is a cache in the phones operating system which you probably didn't delete. "
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l298i | student loan jargon. read the papers, still confused. (so much for a college education right?) | So I've gathered that I am soon to owe 400 a month on various loans (roughly 8,000ish). Because I am still a server, after bills I cannot afford this. I was forced to take a break before grad school (aka didn't get into the one I wanted) and therefore will be past the grace period before I am (hopefully) admitted next Aug. I don't know where to start on loans. They are from various lenders combined under sallie mae from my understanding. I don't quite understand the difference between forbearance and deferment and whether I should attempt to consolidate first. I also don't understand the difference between income contingent repayment and income sensitive repayment. (Ack!)I don't mind making payments, but I need something affordable til grace starts again with graduate school. P.S. Sallie Mae is legally unable to give me advice on this apparently and I have no idea who I could ask (hence why I am asking you all). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l298i/student_loan_jargon_read_the_papers_still/ | {
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"Head to your local bank or (preferably, IMO) credit union and explain your situation. With a 4-year degree and steady (albeit not super well-paying) job you should be able to get some decent refinancing options. You'll pay a higher interest rate on your debt, but you should be able to take your monthly payments down significantly.",
"Head to your local bank or (preferably, IMO) credit union and explain your situation. With a 4-year degree and steady (albeit not super well-paying) job you should be able to get some decent refinancing options. You'll pay a higher interest rate on your debt, but you should be able to take your monthly payments down significantly."
]
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[],
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2cqarn | heart palpitations | My doctor told me I had one when I told him about chest pain and that I'll probably have more in the future. I zoned out when he started throwing around long technical words. What does this mean, and will it hurt me over time? Is this something I need medicine for? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cqarn/eli5_heart_palpitations/ | {
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"I have them and my Dr's final advice was not to worry about them unless I start to feel faint. He did do an EKG, 24-hour Holter monitor, and listened to my heart for awhile. Nothing showed anything bad. It's been about 5 years and I don't really get them unless I'm tired and under stress. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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c18d6k | 666 = evil, 777 = good | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c18d6k/eli5_666_evil_777_good/ | {
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"777:\n\n7 is good because God rested on the 7th day, and having three 7's represents the Holy Trinity\n\n666:\n\nAFAIK, the actual definitive answer is not known. The answer I've heard most is this:\n\nIn Hebrew, each letter has an associated value that can be used to read any word as a number. When you write Nero Caesar in Hebrew and read it as a number, you get 666.\n\nAnother answer I've seen is that, because 7 is associated with completeness and the divine, then 6 is incomplete. So, 666 is \"inherently incomplete\"^[[cite]](_URL_0_)"
]
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"https://books.google.com/books?id=HjKUiljUwcUC&lpg=PA722&pg=PA722#v=onepage&q=incomplete&f=false"
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10fvxf | what happens inside your ear when the elevator goes up (and you get that weird vertigo feeling) | I know theres something in your ears that helps your brain determine if you're sitting, walking, standing, etc and helps you balance. I think its a liquid. What happens to it when the elevator goes up to give you that funny vertigo feeling (if I'm using the term vertigo right). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10fvxf/eli5_what_happens_inside_your_ear_when_the/ | {
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"The sense of equilibrium/balance, the machinery of which is in your inner ear (vestibular system), is freaking cool. If I recall correctly from anatomy class, there are these little, dense \"stones\" in your inner ear called otoliths. When you accelerate linearly, these heavier stones get dragged (because they're pretty heavy/dense). They are connected to nerves that detect this drag and send the signal of movement to your brain, which interpets them as such.\n\nWhen you're going up the elevator, otoliths pull down slightly, inside your inner ears. Vestibular nerves (nerves in your inner ear) detect this, and your brain interprets this as you moving upwards. \n\nThere are also very similar mechanisms for rotational acceleration (think of yourself falling down, or when you're asleep, and you're slowly falling off to the side). These are often part of the different reflex systems, the one that makes you stick out your hands right before you hit the ground as you fall, or when you wake up on the bus right as you start leaning over to the point that you almost fall and look funny. "
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f3pv8h | can you really develop a tolerance for things your body treats as bad? poisons/allergens. if so, how and why does this work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f3pv8h/eli5_can_you_really_develop_a_tolerance_for/ | {
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"I can only partially answer this, but one example of what you're talking about is vaccines. When you get a vaccine you're really being given a very very weak form of an illness. It's not strong enough to really hurt you, but it's enough to train your body against, and teach it how to fight that kind of illness.\n\nImagine, for example, that you were put in a boxing ring against a professional fighter. You probably wouldn't stand a chance.. But what if that fighter had their hands tied behind their back? They couldn't really hurt you, so you'd have a huge advantage, and you'd be able to learn how to punch effectively and knock them out.",
"Yes and no; depends very subjectively on the poison/allergen in question.\n\nAs in, some folks are literally functioning alcoholics, and others can barely drink a beer without getting visibly drunk. With alcohol as a poison, it mostly comes down to how well your kidney & liver filters alcohol out of the blood.\n\nThe \"no\" part comes with how there's a limit on how quickly your kidney & liver filter out the blood - enough alcohol rapidly enough *will be very dangerous* due to alcohol poisoning and how that can lead to breathing issues, choking on your own vomit, heart issues, etc, all because of the sheer amount of alcohol interfering with everything.\n\n;;\n\nAllergens are notably different as they are typically an immune response; the immune system overreacting to an otherwise \"normal\" protein or substance.\n\nThere's been studies & experiments over the years involving peanuts, where they start allergic people off on a dose of about 1 sliver of a chopped peanut, and work up to a point where they can tolerate a whole peanut, or even several whole peanuts. Usually under supervision of a doctor or similar medical professional, where the person is aware & willing of the study/experiment.\n\nThe goal in those studies isn't exactly to \"cure\" them of their allergy - it's to allow them a better quality of life where incidental or mild exposure to that allergy isn't going to be life threatening. It's so they can risk reaching into a jar of cookies, accidentally grab and eat the peanut butter cookie, and not have to rush to the hospital because of it. It doesn't mean they're going to run out and eat a whole bag of peanut M & M's because they took part in a months or years long process of working up tolerance to peanuts.",
"King Mithridates the Great of Pontus (120 - 63 BCE) developed an immunity to a wide variety of poisons by taking small doses over a long period of time. \n\nHe became obsessed with poisons at the age of 11 after his father was poisoned in an assassination. He learned all that he could and was even known as one of the foremost experts of poisons and antidotes of his time. Soon after his father's assassination he started to ingest small doses of a wide variety of them regularly throughout his life. This was so effective that even when he tried to kill himself in later life by drinking poison he didn't die as he was immune to it at that stage. He even gave his name to an antidote to poison which was widely used in Europe for nearly 2000 years. \n\nHe was also an absolute badass/interesting guy. In his early life he lived under the threat of assassination by his own family as he was set to inherit the throne from his father. He withdrew from town life and spent 7 years living in the wilderness to avoid assassination attempts by physical means, and also to toughen himself up, all the while taking his cocktail of poisons. He defied the roman empire and was a thorn in its side for most of his adult life. \n\nBy the end of his life he could speak at least 22 languages, had many children with six wives (one of whom was his sister... Something something Game of Thrones...) and died when he was in his early 70s when he asked his bodyguard and friend to kill him with his sword after his failed attempt to poison himself.\n\nTl;dr yes, you can make yourself immune to poison. Mithridates the Great of Pontus did, he was also a badass.\n\nEdit: should give more info about how this works (in actual ELI5 terms)\n\nYour body breaks down poisons with special things called enzymes. You can think of there being one enzyme for each poison. These are made by a part of your body called your liver, which is beside your tummy. For a lot of poisons, a tiny dose will not kill you because your liver will be able to make enough of the right enzyme to break it down. If you take a tiny bit of the poison regularly, the liver starts to make more of these enzymes and this means your body can break down a bigger amount of the poison.\nAn important note is that this does not work for all poisons."
]
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3fc44o | why don't all plastic bottles have a deposit (e.g. water)? | I've always believed that only pop (soda) had a deposit on the bottles because they were carbonated. But why is this? Wouldn't having a deposit on the water bottles encourage recycling? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fc44o/eli5_why_dont_all_plastic_bottles_have_a_deposit/ | {
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"Michigan Beverage Container Act 1978.\n10 cents For beverages of beer, soda pop, carbonated and mineral water, wine coolers, canned cocktails. In containers made of metal, glass, paper, or plastic under 1 U.S. gal (3.79 L).[Ninety-seven percent redemption rate. Escheated deposits are divided as: 75% to State Cleanup and Redevelopment Trust Fund, 25% returned to retailers. Redemption limit per person,but per day, is $25 in deposits. \nThe one thing we got right!\n and have a 97% Return rate with 25% of un claimed funds returned to retailers for what they have to go through ",
"I am not familiar with the laws where you are from, but in the Netherlands also non-carbonated drinks have a deposit on their bottles, I don't think it is about carbonation at all.\n\nLooking at this wikipedia page:\n_URL_0_\n\nIt seems that some states in the US for example do have different legislation for carbonated and non-carbonated drinks. I don't know why they make that difference, I am actually curious myself now :D",
"The laws are not always well thought out. Water bottles have significantly less plastic, because they don't have to be as strong. The material value of the plastic isn't very high, but it takes a very long time to decompose. It's a matter of focusing deposit costs on the most important sources and hoping for the best that people will recycle all the others anyway.",
"Laws have to be very specific to be effective. You need to be able to draw a strict line between \"legal\" and \"illegal\".\n\nBottle deposit laws have a very specific definition of sort of bottles are covered, covering the contents, size, materials and so on. For example, due to the wording Oregon's law, \"beer & malt beverages\" are covered but wine & apple cider are not because nobody thought to include them.\n\nIn your state, bottled water might have been left off the list because bottled water sales were fairly insignificant 20-30 years ago when your law was passed."
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3cjrx2 | how do combustion engines prevent fires/explosions from happening when the fuel is ignited? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cjrx2/eli5how_do_combustion_engines_prevent/ | {
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"They actually *cause* fire/explosions to happen, just inside their cylinders. Are you asking how they prevent the fire from traveling and igniting the whole fuel tank?",
"Only a small quantity of fuel is injected into each piston cylinder at a time. It is then compressed until it ignites there, partitioned from the gas tank and the rest of the fuel.",
"It is controlled combustion within the combustion chamber designed to control it and harness the energy released. In a closed cylinder piston engine the burning takes place as the piston moves down the cylinder. The volume of the chamber increases as the fire burns."
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dm3e1k | how does the transformer increase or decrease voltages and currents. for example, how does a step down transformer decrease the voltage and simultaneously increase current? | Shouldn't the current supplied by the source be the constant? The structure is obviously not some sort of a compressor that compresses the current and make the voltage high of some kind.
The knowledge I have about transformer is very basic and that is that the e.m.f induced in the secondary coil depends upon the number of turns of the coil and works on the principle of mutual induction and I also understand the fact that the power is kept constant but how can a transformer *increase* current for say? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dm3e1k/eli5_how_does_the_transformer_increase_or/ | {
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"Electricity and Magnetism are essentially the same thing. The electrons going out of the transformer are not the electrons going into the transformer.\n\nThe electrons that go in to the input coil of the transformer create a varying magnetic field. The magnetic field induces an current in the output coil. More coils give a higher voltage, but less current.",
"The formula for electric power is P = V * I, where V is voltage and I is current. A transformer works by taking the energy on the input/primary side, and putting it through windings/coil, which create a complementary magnetic field. That field, in turn, links the input coil to the output/secondary coil. The magnetic field from the primary changes constantly, as the alternating current supplied to it changes. Each time the primary field changes, it \"induces\" a current to flow in the secondary coil. \n\nIn a transformer that had the same number of windings in each coil (not a very useful device AFAIK), the changing field on one side would be mirrored by a changing field on the other side, and the current and voltage would be the same. \n\nBut the idea of a transformer is to change the voltage, usually. So, if you put 10 times as many windings on the secondary side as you do the primary, the changing magnetic field will still induce current to flow, but at only 1/10th the voltage, as there are ten times as many wires that the primary field has to induce that current in. \n\nHowever, each one of those wires in the secondary coil carries current, and so you have ten times as much current on the secondary side as you do the primary. It's important to note that no electrons or current actually cross from the primary to the secondary; all of the action is induced by the changing magnetic field. So you are NOT limited to the amount of current on the primary side. \n\nConservation of energy does apply though, and although there are small losses in any transformer, in general, P^in = P^out. So, since the voltage is reduced by ten, the current must increase by a factor of 10."
]
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72i8bu | how is the u.s. space program able to easily partner with other countries that we're at political odds with (e.g. russia/china)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72i8bu/eli5_how_is_the_us_space_program_able_to_easily/ | {
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"There is nothing easy about it. This takes huge amounts of diplomacy and negotiating. In fact it's considered a huge diplomatic achievement.",
"The people running the Space programs (not the politicians funding them) are for the most part interested in science, not politics. As such they are more than willing to cooperate with other scientists regardless of where they are from. ",
"Just to be clear, the US and Russia absolutely do not partner with China in space stuff. They both feel that any help or partner with China would absolutely up jump Chinese missile, rocket, and space tech, much higher than it is now. They do not want that."
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92dx81 | why does the brain sometimes take a moment to process words? | I’ve noticed, for years, when talking to people, if I say something, at times they’ll say “what?” like they didn’t hear me. Then reply accordingly without me having to repeat anything. It happens to me too. So, what is the delay and why does it take a split second to process? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92dx81/eli5_why_does_the_brain_sometimes_take_a_moment/ | {
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"Basically, at the same time the person said \"what?\" because their conscious mind didn't quite get it the first time, their brain was still analyzing the sound, and right after they said \"what\" their brain automatically listened to the short term memory of the sound a couple more times and eventually figured out what the words were."
]
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4rph10 | is it physically possible to hold your breath until you pass out? | Will your body eventually involuntarily take a breath for you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rph10/eli5_is_it_physically_possible_to_hold_your/ | {
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"It depends. Your body will force you to breath if your blood CO2 levels increase too much. However, if you need oxygen and the CO2 levels in your blood are not high, you will pass out. This is why hyperventilating and then diving underwater is dangerous. Your blood doesn't gain any O2 but you expel lots of CO2, so you run out of oxygen before your body thinks you need to breath and you pass out"
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2cizcg | how does my fingerprint scanner on my iphone work through a plastic bag? | I was at the beach today and I had my phone in a snack bag to keep it dry and my fingerprint worked through the bag. How did this happen?? Is this normal? Has this happened to anyone else with other materials? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cizcg/eli5_how_does_my_fingerprint_scanner_on_my_iphone/ | {
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"Because it's not a fingerprint scanner, it's just a camera. Advanced fingerprint scanners use high resolution CMOS sensors, pressure and temperature sensors, and a myriad of other tricks to detect an actual finger against a simple printout of your print. The scanner on phones and laptops, and other cheap consumer scanners are barely more than a cheap CMOS and a cheap lenses, with some software to do the processing. If the plastic bag is clear, it should work as well. A printout of your fingerprint will most likely work as well. "
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5hg8nh | why is it that in the musical alphabet there is a whole step between all notes except b and c and e and f? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hg8nh/eli5_why_is_it_that_in_the_musical_alphabet_there/ | {
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"When the notes were named, the common scale is what we now call the minor scale (or natural minor scale, or Aeolian mode). The root note of that scale was named A, then B, etc.\n\nOver time, the major scale (or Ionian mode) came to be thought of as the predominant scale, and its pattern of whole steps and half steps can be found by using the same notes as the ones defined above, except starting at C.",
"Because of how the musical alphabet came to be there were mainly minor scales, and A minor was the one that people used the most so people made instruments around that scale and that's how the white keys happened in pianos. Those white notes are still the same ones we use today but now we use them along with the black keys which were added on later, and since there was already a half step between B and C and E and F they didn't add black keys between that.\n\nof course i'm not talking about the actual development of pianos it's just a metaphor to get the point across, also they did that specific layout on pianos because it makes them much easier to read because just imagine a piano that instead of the keys having those B and C and E and F separators how confusing it would look"
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1qcxf5 | what is /r/shitreddit says? why is the subreddit so disliked by the rest of the reddit community? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qcxf5/eli5_what_is_rshitreddit_says_why_is_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a subreddit pointing out the dumb things reddit says while caught up in the moment. Kind of like /r/circlejerk. It seems to focus on sexist things ('girl shoulda been in the kitchen' - over 9000 upvotes), sometimes racist things ('lol dumb nigers'- literal fucktons of upvotes). They are kind of easily offended IMO, and some times looking for arguments where there are none. Didn't know it was disliked I always found it entertaining."
]
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df0b9k | how do cnc machines measure so accurately? | It seems like magic, lets be honest.
Big, vibrating, metal-chewing machines that turn out parts that are flat to the 5th and 6th decimal places? How is there no slip? how does it compensate for vibrations and the super fast movements? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/df0b9k/eli5_how_do_cnc_machines_measure_so_accurately/ | {
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"CNC machines need to be **very** rigid. They have big, thick braces and sturdy arms, and the entire structure is bolted firmly into concrete floors. You can move an arm pretty quickly when it is made up of several inches thick of hardened steel. Vibrations can be kept to a minimum with dampening and simply balancing everything very carefully.",
"First, lots of very rigid metal. If you look into buying machining equipment you quickly find out that even the toy sized stuff is really heavy. A mini lathe that fits on a desk is about 60 kg/130 lb of metal, and that's a small, very light thing.\n\nSecond, very precisely machined surfaces to start with. The entire construction is made to be rigid and tight fitting.\n\nThird, [screws](_URL_3_). You turn a screw once, things move by a millimeter. You can easily turn a wheel by a tiny amount, and a computer can do such things even better. You could make a finer screw that moves things less per turn if you need more precision.\n\nFourth, [rotary encoders](_URL_2_). While consumer level machines (and 3D printers) blindly follow instructions like \"turn this motor by 10 degrees\", and have no clue how much it actually turned and if it even turned at all, the better machines precisely measure motor rotation so they know at all times exactly what the position is, and if something is slipping.\n\nFifth, [anti-backlash devices](_URL_1_) and [ball screws](_URL_0_)",
"As well as what has already been posted, a lot of effort goes into reducing \"backlash\", the amount of slop the mechanisms have until it actually moves. The goal is to have every computer command be translated into actual movement, not just be lost in sloppy fitting parts."
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"https://www.liutaiomottola.com/Tools/Backlash.htm",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_encoder",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadscrew"
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2udtzd | why do people still judge others for playing video games? | *remove post* | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2udtzd/eli5_why_do_people_still_judge_others_for_playing/ | {
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"Probably for why it was looked down on before. It's seen as \"nerdy\" or unhealthy in contrast to sport or a physical hobby. \n\nHowever I think it's becoming less and less looked down upon. It's definitely more acceptable than it was a decade ago.\n\nI can see within ten years video games will be perfectly normal like watching TV or reading is. ",
"I think it depends on the games you play. \n\nMost people now, especially in their late teens / twenties play games. Guys will play 2K with their friends, maybe some Call of Duty, etc. and nobody cares. It's a fun past time. I think when it goes into more specific games that people start judging. \n\nEspecially if you play on PC, mention that you are interested in the new Elder Scrolls game or WoW expansion, they might judge you for that. Also, if you are a grown man, buying Ninento games will be looked down upon, because those are mostly kid games. If you're buying them for your child, no one bats an eye, say that you are buying them for yourself and people will judge.\n\nHowever, look how far gaming have come. Nearly everyone plays, and with everyone having smartphones, gaming is seen as something everyone does, like watching TV. "
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3nslb2 | could the earth ever be moved like in futurama? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nslb2/eli5_could_the_earth_ever_be_moved_like_in/ | {
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"Theoretically, apply enough force to the earth (I am not nearly good enough at math to work out what that would need to be), and yes, it would move.\n\nPractically, no. I imagine if we had the energy capabilities to exert a force like that, we would have much more advanced methods of dealing with greenhouse gases than just pushing the planet further from the sun. ",
"The basic difficulty in moving a planet is you need something to push against. There's no traction in space, so all spacecraft do it by pushing off their own fuel.\n\nA significant fraction of the mass of a spacecraft is in its fuel. To move the Earth you'd have to pick up big chunks of it and throw them really, really fast in order to move the remainder into a new location.\n\nSimply put, we don't know how to make the kind of force that would be required. On the other hand we do not understand gravity very well. \n\nThe math makes sense (sort of) for gravity effects that look like science fiction wormholes and warp fields (often theoretical physics inspires science fiction and vice-versa) but we have *no clue* how to make gravity do that weird stuff.\n\nThe other problem is that even though Earth has stayed on this orbit for a very long time, it has experienced both significant global warming and even more significant global cooling. Surface temperature is determined by how well the sky insulates the surface or shades it from sunlight. Distance from the sun is actually a lot less important than the chemistry of the sky.\n\nWe don't understand that very well either, but we do understand it a lot better than we understand gravity.",
"What everyone is failing to realize here is that the earth is always moving. It orbits the sun at 30 km a sec. On top of that, it is wobbling and rotating too!\n\nIf we were able to somehow move the earth, it probably wouldn't be in our best interest. We have seasons because of the earth's wobble so if we moved Earth and lost that wobble, it wouldn't be pretty.\n\nAlso, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is what is responsible for temperature fluctuations (ie ice ages and carboniferous eras). We are in a great spot in relation to the sun to support life. Any closer and it'd be hot as hell like Venus and any further away and it would be cold as shit like Mars."
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dnskqk | why are we sick when we exert ourselves during exercise? | It just seems counterintuitive to get rid of energy by throwing up what you have eaten | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dnskqk/eli5_why_are_we_sick_when_we_exert_ourselves/ | {
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"Blood gets diverted to your muscles when you are exercising, and there's only so much blood to go around.\n\nIf you over-exert yourself and for long enough, too much blood gets diverted away from your stomach to a point where it recognizes it can no longer operate normally for digestion, so triggers you to throw up.\n\nThe better trained you are, the less blood needs to be diverted away from your organs to perform the exercise."
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9wj25i | the neuroscience of forming and breaking habits | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wj25i/eli5_the_neuroscience_of_forming_and_breaking/ | {
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"Well Timmy (make believe 5 year old),\n\nThe way your brain works, is it makes little pathways of electricity when you do or think about something. The more you do or think about something, the better the pathways of electricity are constructed/maintained by your brain. You can think of it like a path in the woods, if it has high traffic, it stays a path, and if not weeds and brush grow and people choose the path that is easier to walk on.\n\nSo if you do something habitually, meaning daily or hourly, wanting, planning or actually do something, your brain will default to doing these things even if you may not want to do them anymore, because your pathways for this action/thought are so well defined, and you previously did them for months or years.\n\nSo one way to break a habit, is to replace it with something similar, so you can do the same actions and thoughts, but perhaps the replacement is safer. One example is vaping instead of smoking. True it is still harmful, but it doesn't have the same harmful smoke. Another example would be replacing sugar with low calorie sweetener in your drinks. You still are drinking something sweet, but not getting all the calories."
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20335q | most realistic scenario following a nuclear attack | What would be the most realistic scenario if say, North Korea got pissed at the US and just launched a few nukes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20335q/eli5most_realistic_scenario_following_a_nuclear/ | {
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"North Korea is incapable of launching missiles that would reach mainland USA. Furthermore, without hatred for the US permeating North Korean society, a major pillar of the regime's support would be gone. In essence, North Korea *needs* the USA because...\n\n\n > War is peace\n\n\nFurthermore while North Korea has a nuclear refinery (I believe) they do not have thermonuclear weapons. The PRC would invade North Korea if North Korea *really* started being a problem. War with North Korea would do horrific damage to South Korea, maybe some damage to Japan. but that's about it IMO.",
"Let me start by saying that the use of a nuclear weapon by North Korea is so unlikely as to be virtually incalculable.\n\nNobody knows if North Korea has thermonuclear (fusion) weapons. It's highly, highly doubtful. They have never tested one and even if they had an old Chinese design nobody really knows if it would work until it is tested. If all they have are atomic (fission) weapons, they have the capability to do serious damage to a city but not the capability to destroy a country.\n\nThe three targets most at risk are Seoul, Tokyo, and the US military bases in South Korea. Each of those are different kinds of targets.\n\nTokyo is a terror target. Hitting Tokyo with nuclear weapons is a spasm of suicidal impulses probably after the regime in North Korea has already toppled. Its the kind of nightmare scenario you get in a Tom Clancy novel where someone decides that if they are going to die, their enemy is going to die too.\n\nHitting Seoul is a target of national strategic value. If North Korea thinks it could reunify the peninsula with another lighting strike south across the DMZ, using atomic weapons against Seoul has the value of destabilizing the South Korean regime, tying the country's population in knots, creating a no-go zone for international military force, and demonstrating \"shock & awe\" style psychological warfare.\n\nHitting the US military bases would be more of a show of bravado than a meaningful strategic action. Combined with a strike on Seoul and a blitzkrieg south, it could be potentially justified if the North Koreans thought that the result would be paralysis by the US forces on the peninsula. However everyone has to assume that those forces have been training for just such an attack for years and that the assets in Japan, Diego Garcia, and on ships at sea are prepared to react without delay.\n\nSo you have basically two scenarios - the last malicious act of a despot \"just because he can\", and a part of a warfighting strategy.\n\nIn the first case, the regime would have to be in an advanced state of collapse so it would hard to justify using weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population. The Chinese and the Americans would likely already be either in-country, or massing on the borders to rush in and secure the rest of the nuclear arsenal with special forces anyway - a launch on Tokyo would just trigger that action. It's very likely that the Chinese and the Americans have already discussed how such a thing would be done to avoid accidentally triggering war between themselves. Both sides know that they can't let nuclear weapons flow to non-state actors and China has as much to lose in that respect as the rest of the world.\n\nThere are variables in the second case, and those variables impact the results.\n\nIf the US and China are involved in a standoff (or a hot war) over Taiwan, the North Koreans might think they had an opening to go for it. In such a case, whatever deals the US and China might have regarding the nuclear arsenal are probably off the table. In fact, North Korea might calculate that the US would not be able to resist its attack due to the risk of widening a war in the Taiwan Straight. If they were right, then the strategy could work, and the North Koreans might get a substantial benefit from nuking Seoul and/or various US military bases.\n\nThat could result in strategic nuclear weapons being used by the US against the North. The US would not use ballistic missiles since that would be too likely to trigger a response from the Chinese. But they could use cruise missiles. The issue of heavy civilian casualties would weigh heavily on the US - everyone knows that most North Koreans aren't in control of what their leadership does and killing millions of civilians as \"punishment\" is a bitter pill for the US to swallow. Still, the US leadership might consider such a strike to be required for all sorts of historical and precedent setting reasons. The US, unlike North Korea, would use thermonuclear weapons, which would mean that Pyongyang would cease to exist. Other targets would likely include large military bases, industrial complexes, and concentrated units in the field (if such existed).\n\nIf the US and China were in a state similar to the present, I think it's very likely that the Chinese, rather than the US, would be the first responders. The US would probably fight the North Koreans with conventional forces in South Korea, and the Chinese would probably decapitate the regime to end the invasion. The US might fire one or two smallish weapons at military targets in the North to ensure that the world was \"on notice\" that you couldn't nuke a US military asset and get away with it, but they would probably not want to use nuclear weapons against civilian targets.\n\nThe Chinese don't want the North to fight a war. They have made that abundantly clear. They want the North as a buffer between the US and China - they don't want to see Korea reunited under the South's leadership, and then US military units parked on their border. Their best outcome would be to replace the leadership who started such a war with another puppet government and try to limit the geopolitical fallout - perhaps trading some North Korean territory to the South as reparations. Certainly the Chinese and their North Korean allies would put nuclear disarmament on the table instantly in the same way the Syrians did with their chemical weapons when they screwed up in Damascus.\n\nIt's likely that the Japanese would \"go nuclear\" if a nuke were used either against Japan or anywhere in Korea. The Japanese could have a thermonuclear deterrent within a year - they already know how to build all the necessary hardware and have probably done all the perquisite non-nuclear work necessary to build weapons very quickly. Proliferation could expand to South Korea (depending on how badly damaged Seoul was), the Philippines, and Indonesia. It would take those other nations a lot longer to \"go nuclear\" but the pressure to have their own deterrent would be overwhelming in the same way the pressure on Pakistan proved overwhelming after India went nuclear.\n\nThere's a non-zero chance that the US could end up forcibly unifying Korea after a nuclear attack, and that could put the US and China into some very awkward conversations. The South Koreans certainly would not want the US to leave - they would want their security guaranteed by a large US military presence. To say that would make China uncomfortable would be putting matters very very lightly.\n\nAnyway, bad stuff happens no matter what the scenario is."
]
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[],
[]
] | |
15qikr | how fossilization works. | I understand it is the mineralization of organic matter but that's where my knowledge stops. Also I'm not quite sure about the process of mineralization of organic matter. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15qikr/eli5_how_fossilization_works/ | {
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"Ground water seeps into the different parts of the corpse. If the ground water carries a lot of minerals, over time those minerals can begin to deposit in the corpse, sort of like how [old pipes](_URL_0_) will sometimes have mineral deposits on them. At the same time, the corpse is decaying. That decay may be slowed by being underwater or under a bet of silt or sediment. \n\nIf the decay and mineral deposits happen at roughly the same speed, you can get beautiful and detailed fossils of the organism. "
]
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[
"http://www.waterwellsolutions.com.au/images/calcium-pipe.jpg"
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