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uhfcc | What is the difference between oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) as well as the difference between the methods used? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"**Fracking:** imagine that the oil you want is soaked in a sponge. But this sponge isn't squishy (it's hard), but it's also easy to break, like glass. If you drilled a hole through this \"sponge\" you will only be able to reach the oil in the pockets really close to the hole you're drilling. But imagine drilling a hole through the glass sponge sideways, and then blowing into the hole *really* hard. This will make the glass sponge crack. Oil will now leak down through those cracks and you can collect it from the hole you have drilled.\n\nDrillers are trying to get the oil by using liquid chemicals to crack the sponge, and these chemicals could leak through the cracks. The people living nearby are worried that the chemicals will hurt the land and water, and in turn hurt the animals and humans as well."
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} | train_eli5 | What is the difference between oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) as well as the difference between the methods used?
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6cmlnp | how did the very first life forms develop? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well we have some idea. Infact, you could create life in you own kitchen! its very simple:\n\ntake a tank, fill it halfway with purified water (we want water that is already devoid of life.)\nthen, get a canister of pressurized carbon-dioxide. spray some into the tank, then quickly cover and seal the tank.\n\nNow, all organic life is composed of four main elements: Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Oxygen.^^^and trace other elements\nYou have these elements already in your tank: water has hydrogen and Oxygen, and the air contains Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon.\n\nNow all you have to do is wait. The molecules will bump into each other, transfer valence energy and electrons to each other. This will break and create bonds between the atoms. eventually, all four elements will bump into each other and form carbo-hydrates and amino acids.\n\nNow wait a bit more. These amino acids, carbohydrates, etc etc will keep bumping into each other, exchanging bonds, and eventually (in many hundreds or thousands of years) a molecule of Neuclic Acid will form. And guess what that Acid is? Yes! It's ALIVE.(sorta)\n\nThis is basically how it all started. I could go into more detail if you want. Keep in mind, I'm no astrophysicist. This is shit I've learned from watching Bill Nye the Science Guy. You can probably get way more accurate info on google."
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} | train_eli5 | how did the very first life forms develop?
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109fwe | The Great Awakening | I don't understand this very well, and its often brought up in class, despite only a small section about it in the textbook. Many thanks are given ahead of time! Whatcha got for me, r/explainlikeimfive? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I assume your textbook is referring to the Great Awakening that happend in the early 1800s in the US. It was basically a religious revival among Protestants.\n\nPeople got a lot more interested in religion, spurred on by evangelical ministers. Some of them were called \"circuit riders\", and they would ride from town to town preaching. Church membership skyrocketed. New religious denominations were formed, such as the Church of Christ, and the Latter Day Saints (Mormons). \n\n\nSo why is this important, you ask? Well, that dramatic increase in religious fervor actually have a bunch of major impacts on the US as a whole. For example, the movement to abolish slavery took hold from religious ideas in the Great Awakening. Also, the temperance movement (which sought to prohibit alcohol) gained adherents in the same era, as did the Women's Rights movement."
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} | train_eli5 | The Great Awakening
I don't understand this very well, and its often brought up in class, despite only a small section about it in the textbook. Many thanks are given ahead of time! Whatcha got for me, r/explainlikeimfive? | [
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6zfmge | Does FLAC compression have different bitrates? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"FLAC has different levels of compression but they relate to how much CPU/RAM is used in the compression rather than the target bitrate. Since FLAC is lossless, it's not really possible to target a bitrate.\n\nAs far as file quality goes, FLAC is limited by the quality of the input. If you have a CD, the quality will always be 16-bit, 44.1kHz stereo - if you start with higher or lower quality audio, you can compress them.",
"Bitrate refers to how many bits are used to store each second of audio on average. With something like MP3 you set a target like 128kps and then the compression algorithm will compress and throw away 'less important' information from the audio until it reaches that target size. For example if I had the sequence (1, 2, 3, 3, 5) I could change it slightly to (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) so that I could then compress it as (1-5). I've lost some of the original information but it still looks similar to the original and I got to compress it a lot.\n\nFLAC is lossless, which means that while it tries to compresses information it never throws away information. With FLAC that sequence we used would have to be compressed as (1-3, 3, 5) to avoid losing any information. We don't have the option of altering the data to make it easier to compress.\n\nThis means that the bitrate of FLAC cannot be directly controlled - it is whatever it happens to be based on how well the input data can be compressed without loss. It is possible to adjust FLAC compression by configuring how *hard* it tries to compress the data. By investing more CPU time it can exhaustively search for patterns or other commonalities in the data to find a slightly better way to compress it without losing information."
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} | train_eli5 | Does FLAC compression have different bitrates?
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3mbfhj | Why did people think Beanie Babies would be so valuable? | Bonus question: Why aren't they worth anything today? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Collector items tend to be valuable as they become rare. These where made almost solely to have this kind of economy where they can be traded and collected. Unfortunately for them though the economy wasn't handled correctly and they quickly became over populated and/or people moved on from them.",
"Things have value because people want them. Many collector things have had value years after they were made, because, for one reason or another, people wanted them. Examples include early Star Wars merchandise, Baseball cards of famous players, etc.\n\nPeople thought Beanie Babies would be the same thing, and so they were willing to pay a lot of money for them; because of the expectation that they would be worth more later. This was fueled by the company that made them, which created \"limited edition\", \"collector's edition\", etc. Beanie Babies, trying to become a collectible.\n\nHowever, at some point people started asking \"are they really worth it?\"; and the collective answer was \"No\". And because people never wanted them for anything other than \"they will be worth more later\", the craze ended.\n\nCollectibles that keep their value do so because people want them for other reasons: Baseball cards are valuable because fans want every card for their team, for example.",
"It might be worth mentioning that while unlikely in another 20-30 to maybe even 40 years from now they might become popular collectors' items again from the \"turn of the millennium\". They just did not become the commodity that people suspected they would be. They were an absolute fad and people thought their popularity would never drop off.\n\nIt might come back in popularity to some collectors like things from the 60s and 70s now. Who knows?"
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} | train_eli5 | Why did people think Beanie Babies would be so valuable?
Bonus question: Why aren't they worth anything today? | [
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7loxm3 | Why does gas mileage take a nose dive during cold temperature? Is there an agreed upon temp where warming up the car is required? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are a few things.\n\n\n1) the above \n2) The engine has an optimal temperature below that temperature it runs rich to warm up faster.\n3) cold air has a higher oxygen content so you need more fuel to create a good burn. More fuel means worse mileage. This only really translate to 5-10 percent difference but it all adds up.",
"Due to the oil and other fluids getting goopy in the cold.\n\nYer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why do cars have significantly worse gas mileage when it's cold? ](_URL_1_) ^(_16 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does the changing temperature outside affect my car's gas mileage? ](_URL_0_) ^(_5 comments_)"
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} | train_eli5 | Why does gas mileage take a nose dive during cold temperature? Is there an agreed upon temp where warming up the car is required?
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8ulrk5 | Why are many manholes placed right in the path of a car's tire on roads? | They are repaving the road by me, and they have the road surface milled down. All of the manholes and sewer grates are now sticking up really high and are super hazardous. Which made me realize how many manholes are placed directly where a car's tire would/should be (supposing they are staying within the marked lanes). I started actually taking notice and nearly all of the roads in my area (Southeast PA) have them in seemingly the worst location possible. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't know for sure but I'd guess it's because the tunnel is under the road and the ladder down is on the side of the tunnel. Which more or less places the ladder under your tire, apparently.",
"Why is the worst possible location or even a bad position. Have you notice a lot of manhole coverts that breaks or get damages by cars? \n\nThere is a good reson that they are spread out over the road. There are often multiple types of pipes in the road that follow the path of the road especially in cities. So the man hole covers has to be there because the pipe is directly below.",
"At one point, the covers may have been in the middle of the lanes. The road could have been expanded and lane lines moves, making the covers in path of the tire.\n\nIt could also be that it was the best/most cost effective way they could work it into the sewer."
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} | train_eli5 | Why are many manholes placed right in the path of a car's tire on roads?
They are repaving the road by me, and they have the road surface milled down. All of the manholes and sewer grates are now sticking up really high and are super hazardous. Which made me realize how many manholes are placed directly where a car's tire would/should be (supposing they are staying within the marked lanes). I started actually taking notice and nearly all of the roads in my area (Southeast PA) have them in seemingly the worst location possible. Why is this? | [
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2s1498 | Do caterpillars know that they are going to become a butterfly? If so, how? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a common mistake that people sometimes make to try to apply human levels of intelligence to insects.\n\nInsects are not self-aware. A caterpillar does not even know that it is a caterpillar. It is aware of the general shape of the surface it's on, and it feels hungry around things it can eat. \n\nThat's really the extent of it's cognitive powers - it doesn't know things like how much it's eaten recently, or if there are usually predators in an area. And it certainly doesn't know what's going to happen to it after it's done with it's metamorphosis.",
"Think of the process this way: did you know when you were going to hit puberty growing up? Or did you even know before somebody told you it would happen?\n\nIt's the same here. One day, hormones go off in the caterpillars body, and this leads to the chain of events that end up as a butterfly (or moth) -- the larva becomes a pupa (that's the cocoon part of the process), and then hormones alter their body until they come out of their pupae transformed into adult form, which is called an imago.\n\nAt that point, the hormones continue to tell the imago that its only priority is reproducing, i.e. gettin' some. In this particular, it doesn't differ from human puberty at all.",
"Hormones.\n\nIn fact, parasitic wasps exploits those hormones to stop the caterpillar from pupating and makes it keep on eating none stop as if the caterpillar still under going it's growth stage.\n\nSimilar hormones controlling life stages also exist in humans, for example, timing of the first menstrual cycle."
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} | train_eli5 | Do caterpillars know that they are going to become a butterfly? If so, how?
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4u59cd | What's the difference between a street, Avenue, way, run, road etc. When used with street names? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Avenues are often major roadways, courts circles closes and lanes are almost always dead ends, boulevards and parkways are multiple lanes roads."
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} | train_eli5 | What's the difference between a street, Avenue, way, run, road etc. When used with street names?
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34hrvq | Why is Africa the least developed continent if humanity started there? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, you can contrast Northern Africa from Southern Africa. For most of history, Northern Africa wasn't any less developed than the most developed parts of Europe or the Near East (although it fell behind in the early industrial period).\n\nIn fact, Carthage and Egypt were among the wealthiest, most advanced civilizations in multiple eras right up through early modern times.\n\nThe difference between North Africa and the rest of the continent? The Sahara Desert is a giant, awful sinkhole that killed 99% of cultural exchange or trade relations between most of sub-Saharan Africa and the outside world, except for some contact in and around the ports - which more often resulted in slave trading than productive cultural exchanges.\n\nIsolated cultures pretty much never do well on the scale of human development.",
"Agriculture, geography, and luck to put it simply. You could check into the book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' which outlines a good theory on why Europeans got so far ahead of everyone. From that you can understood how Africa wound up getting left in the metaphorical dust.\n\nFood is the principle method of a growing population. If you want more people, you need more food, and you need to master the principles of large-scale agriculture. What you need for that is access to high-protein grains, good storage conditions, and access to animals for domestication. Europe lucked out by having easy access to all of those - sheeps, goats, cows, two varities of wheat, barley, flax, and three protein rich legume crops just to list a few. This gave early Europeans access to protein-rich and easily farm-able food sources. East Asia has things like rice and soy, which are also great food sources, though rice is really labor-intensive.\n\nAfrica is really spread out north to south, and it is a fucking huge continent if you haven't picked up a map lately. The climate changes a lot as you travel north to south; whereas in Europe, your climate stays reasonable similar as you go east to west - this means that crops you grow in one part of Europe you can easily take to another part and grow it there. Africa doesn't quite have the luxury with its deserts and rainforests (don't know if you've ever tried farming in either of those...it isn't easy).\n\nEurope is small and densely packed, relative to Africa, so this bred a lot of conflict, too. War is bad for human life, but it is great for developing new technologies. It's like a slower version of the arms race - one side gets better weapons, so the other side develops better armour. It's a cycle that feeds itself and led to Europe having very strong military technologies.",
"This is sort of a loaded question, so I want to start by clarifying my understanding of the terminology. First of all, LDCs (least developed countries) are a classification made by the UN a few decades ago to help categorize countries with low average income, low resources, low infrastructure, and high economic vulnerability. In modern social science, the term human development index (HDI) is sometimes substituted for a similar measure of development. It is important to note that these measurements do not typically seek to quantify or rank cultural, artistic, or linguistic achievements. Most of the LDCs on the UN's list are in sub-Saharan Africa.\n\nThere are also a lot of theories as to where humanity started, but for the sake of this explanation I'm going to say humanity is typically thought to have \"started\" in or around Ethiopia/Northern Africa. I'm pretty sure Ethiopia is also the site of the oldest human remains found to date (160,000 years old), although I know some cave art in Asia is thought to pre-date that. From that point forward, history happened- people emigrated to other regions of the globe, and empires rose and fell. For a while, Egypt was one of the strongest empires in the inhabited world, and it is located in Africa. In more recent history (think ~500 BCE forward), Northern Africa in particular was on the destructive receiving end of the rise and fall of other empires to the north. Ancient Greece and Rome fueled expansive slave systems partially through prisoners of war taken from northern Africa, and waged wars against the developed cities of that continent. Later it was the British, French, Dutch, and Americans who continued the tradition of capturing and selling the strongest people they could find in Africa, although these slave systems moved beyond northern Africa to other parts of the continent which were now accessible through updated technology (like bigger ships). The coastal regions of Africa, which were easier to inhabit, were essentially targets for plunder and destruction by newer empires with more advanced transportation and sometimes weaponry. \n\nEven after the abolition of slavery in the above mentioned countries, the history of war and geo-political maneuverings from predominantly Western nations against Africa continued. The industrial revolution hit the west first, and once those nations had developed massive wealth through industry, we didn't want to share. It didn't make economic sense to assist other countries (like many of those in Africa and Central and Southern America) to develop when economically it was more beneficial to use them as cheap sources for raw manufacturing materials. Not to be too dramatic, but the industrial revolution basically pushed the already well established rules of economic imperialism in the west into overdrive. Only now instead of stripping Africa of its people and goods, the west was more focused on the goods. (Although we could spin this off into a discussion on ethical treatment of workers within these countries and modern day slavery. That's a rant for another time).\n\nBeyond that, sub-Saharan Africa is a much tougher climate for sustaining life than other areas with more water access. Especially before the advent of modern plumbing, shipping and transportation, most cities around the globe developed near large sources of water. Water means sustainability for settlements as a drinking source, as a farming source, and as a transportation source among other benefits. Take a look at a map sometime and try to locate all of the cities more than 300 years old which are not found near a major water source- they're really difficult to find! The Sahara, which is the largest desert in the world, spans several African nations and borders or is within many of the LDCs.\n\nAlthough there are sure to be other factors impacting the LDC status of many African nations, I think the interaction of outside empires against Africa and the tougher sustainability of the climate are the biggest factor which have impacted the last 2000 years in particular. I also want to point out that many African countries and cities are quite developed- see _URL_0_ for this years list of most developed countries in Africa. Additionally, LDCs are just a current snapshot of where these nations (and I suppose the continent) is ranked. If life started in Africa sometime prior to 160,000 years ago, there's really no telling how developed past empires may have been. Written language has only been around since ~3,500 BCE as far as we currently know. Much of the details of history have simply been lost to time.\n\nTL;DR: The UN says many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the least developed, which might have to do with economic imperialism from a lot of other places and the unique challenge of developing cities in places with little water. Not all of Africa falls into the \"least developed\" category.",
"Maybe I should mention something I haven't seen anyone else mentioning . Correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the reasons why the Americas is more developed than Africa is that the Europeans who colonised these continents stayed indefinitely. Building cities and infrastructure. Colonisation didn't work that way in Africa. Europeans came, took what they wanted and left, leaving the countries in worse shape than they were. South Africa is the only African country I can think of were Europeans stayed. And many would say South Africa is or was in better shape than some South American countries.",
"There's one thing that needs to be mentioned that everyone else here has so far ignored:\n\n*Time scale*\n\nAfrica has not always been the least developed continent. Humans as we know them have existed for some 100,000 years. Africa can only be described as \"behind\" for the last 200-400 or so. \n\nHell, the richest man who ever lived (as far as we know from historical record) was an African: Mansa Musa, leader of the Mali Empire in West Africa, he singlehandedly crashed the Egyptian economy in the 14th century by spending so much money there on the way to Mecca.",
"A Western idea of \"development\" and colonization. \r\rAsking why Africa isn't developed first implies there is a linear path all societies must take, ending in the glory that is Western Europe and North America. That comes from Western theory and is not the way many places view the world. Some societies, for instance, believe in more of a cyclical process. \r\rRelated, Africa is huge, so generalizing for all of Africa is impossible. There are tons of places in the continent of Africa that would meet the ideals of linear development. \r\rSecond, colonialism and slavery. Many African societies were far more \"developed\" than the rest of the world before colonialism and slavery. They had advanced mathematics, agriculture techniques, books, religion, etc. But can enlightened Europe enslave an enlightened people? I have come to understand our view of Africa came about in part as justification for the slave trade. We (Americans) painted Africa as dumb and backwards to justify the subjugation of its peoples. \r\rBeyond the view, colonial efforts in Africa underdeveloped the continent. As others have said, many extracted resources from Africa to the West, drawing financial benefits away. (read the dependency theorists Wallerstein and Gunder Frank) add to the extraction of resources the arbitrary carving up of the continent by Europe into states that had no basis in the people living there and you have a recipe for the current unstable situation in many places. As others mentioned, you can't arbitrarily put dozens of minority groups under the rule of one and expect it to all be hunky dory. \r\rColonial powers try to maintain control long after the heyday, often with disastrous consequences. Take, for instance, Congo's first democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba. He tried to unify Africans under a banner of peace and self-determination, but was deposed and assassinated with CIA backing. \r\rWhich brings the other point of control of resources. Congo is very rich in natural resources. If they had a strong government, so many other countries and companies would suffer from having to leave or pay fair price for taking the resources. There is little attention to the current atrocities in DRC because a stable government there would be costly to business interests. \r\rTL;DR the West wants to think Africa is backwards because it benefits us economically. In truth it is a huge continent with varied ideas of \"development\", and Western (and increasingly Eastern) interventions actively underdevelop many areas.",
"Very simple answer: Humanity started there but civilization didn't (thats the current middle-east, basicly anything around the Eufrat river: The cradle of life) same can be asked there if Civilization started in the middle-east how come they are so uncivilized now?",
"One of the reasons could be that Sub-Saharan Africans have the lowest average IQ of any all the races. There is tons of scientific research on this topic, feel free to google search for it.",
"Dumbed down to the bare basics; Humanity all figured out agriculture literally tens of thousands of years apart. Europe and Asia got a huge head start and as a result they got all the colonization and international slave trading done before anyone else had a chance to catch up. \n\nThe tribal nations didn't need to advance their way of life because they were doing really well. Sadly this meant they weren't as technologically advanced in warfare in the 14th and 15th century, so they got rekt by the colonisers. \n\nAnd not just Africa, South America was taken by Spain and Portugal while France and England took North America. They all got tons of small island nations.",
"When French left Algeria they took everything, telephones, generators, everything you needed to run a society.\n\nAlso, Africa was created in 1884 in Berlin with no Africans present. Nations were designed to have different tribes stuck together. Imagine a nation 10% Hatfeild and 90% McCoy. The Europeans would educate the minority and make them the 'middle class' to control the majority.",
"It is fricking HUGE... also colonization due to the large amount of natural resources kind of disenfranchised it's inhabitants. The also have this giant desert that makes it tough."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is Africa the least developed continent if humanity started there?
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zslfa | Explain To Me Like I'm Five- The difference between Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian party. | Honestly, I've got no clue about politics.The very few Things i know are extremely bias and don't seem right. So please ELI5.
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"This has been asked [many](_URL_6_), [many](_URL_4_), [many](_URL_5_), [many](_URL_3_), [many](_URL_0_), [many](_URL_1_) [times](_URL_1_) [here](_URL_2_). You may find a lot of help browsing through these links.\n\nNonetheless, here's the short version. Republicans generally value individual freedom and independence over most everything else. Democrats generally value keeping everybody alive, happy, and healthy over everything else. Because of this, the Republicans favor a government that is very small, charges very few taxes, spends very little, and pretty much is mostly concerned with protecting the country from invasion. Democrats are going to be more inclined to use government power to try and help improve stuff, so they'll be more inclined to regulate industry, try and make sure everybody can get medical care, etc.\n\nThere are a few big exceptions. A large block of Republicans are also very religious conservatives, which means that Republicans tend to also be the party that doesn't like stuff that conservative Christians don't like, and so Republicans are gonna be the ones trying to stop abortion, stop gay marriage, and put prayer in school.\n\nLibertarians are kind of like extreme Republicans minus all of the religious stuff, so they're in favor of a government that does almost nothing whatsoever, which includes, for instance, letting gay people do whatever they like, since it's none of their business. They're kind of extreme freedom guys. Libertarians also tend to be in favor of simplicity and minimizing regulation, so they'll tend to get behind odder economic ideas like switching to a gold standard (rather than having a government organization manage the money more hands-on).",
"Uh I'll give it a crack. I'm fairly certain I'll be about 65% accurate so I welcome corrections!\n\nDemocrats - Think government regulations keep things fair. Use social programs to help build the economy (though this may cost a lot of money the theory is it can pay itself off later).\n\nRepublicans - Favor less government. Hate tax increases of any kind. Promote small businesses whenever they can. Favor the 2nd amendment and are mostly pro-life in the abortion debate (at least these are the winning statements politicians make to at least win the South over).\n\nLibertarians - Favor liberty. Feel that each state should decide its own set of laws on many issues (such as marijuana). They feel that more localized government is a more effective government (hence why states are better than nation etc). The general belief as a libertarian is \"If what you're doing isn't negatively impacting anyone, go ahead and do it\" < - super generalization to give you an idea, obviously long-term consequences for such a generalization are possible (ie wiping out an entire species of fish or something random like that).\n\n\nStances on (current) War:\n\nD - Don't like it but aren't really doing anything about it\n\nR - Not sure if they like it - not really doing anything about it\n\nL - Bring the troops home, secure our borders. Focus on us, keep trade agreements open with other countries but don't become \"Team America - World Police\"\n\nTax\nD - If we raise taxes, we can give more back to the people\n\nR - Lower taxes, we want the money we earned\n\nL - Tax everyone the same. Taxes are a percentage, those that earn more already pay more.\n\n\nAbortion\n\nreally depends on the politician but generally\n\nD - Pro-Choice\n\nR - Pro-Life\n\nL - Either\n\n\nI was really trying to be unbiased, but I associate myself closest with the Libertarians if I had to pick one. Like I said before, I welcome any corrections as long as they are generally the case with each party."
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jdzu9/eli5_how_the_republicans_came_to_be_called/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2kmc/can_someone_explain_the_difference_between/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xw4f9/what_are_the_primary_differences_between/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y8ma3/eli5_republicans_and_democrats/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l0rtg/eli5_who_is_a_republican_and_who_is_a_democrat/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tnn63/im_canadian_please_explain_like_im_5_the/"
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} | train_eli5 | Explain To Me Like I'm Five- The difference between Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian party.
Honestly, I've got no clue about politics.The very few Things i know are extremely bias and don't seem right. So please ELI5. | [
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4cx07e | "State Police Aircraft Used in Speed Enforcement" | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few ways, the easiest is, sometimes you'll see white horizontal stripes on the side of the highway. Each one of those stripes are a mile apart. If you cross 2 white stripes in 1 minute, you are going 60 miles an hour. Under 1 minute, and you might be speeding.\n\nSome other aircraft are fairly slow, and can fly at 50-60 mph, so they match the car's speed, and from that they can measure the car's speed since it equals the plane's speed."
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} | train_eli5 | "State Police Aircraft Used in Speed Enforcement"
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4xocth | When you're drinking from a bottle, what stops more water from flowing down through your throat until you swallow? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the back of the tongue. If you are taking consecutive swallows (fill mouth, swallow, fill mouth, swallow) it is the base of your tongue. See this swallow study link. The liquid shows up black, and the person drinking holds the liquid in their oral cavity with the back of the tongue. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's not the epiglottis or anything else. The epiglottis helps close the airway and direct the food down where it's supposed to go. And chugging is a different kind of swallow where the person consciously closes their airway, opens up their upper esophageal sphincter, and lets the liquid slide down. People who chug are just pouring it down. \n\nSource: I'm a speech language pathologist who specializes in helping people swallow after a stroke or cancer, and I give those X-Ray swallow tests (modified barium swallow study) all the time.",
"Have you heard of chugging? That looks to the observer like drinking, except the person opens their throat to let liquid just flow down into them. This has to be learned as it's natural for the throat to close when drinking, then open when the drinker chooses to swallow.\n\nSo... what stops the water is your normal swallowing procedure.",
"Swallowing is a complex mix of voluntary and involuntary (reflex) actions, in a specific order. There are some adjustments depending of what and how you're eating or drinking (liquid or solid, dry or wet, small or big bite, etc.), but it more or less happen the same way. It's also the same for swallowing your spit (gross but true). There's differences on how babies and adults do it, so this applies to adult swallowing. Chugging is not normal swallowing (like sword-eating is not normal swallowing). \n\n \n\nIf you're drinking water from a glass (with or without a straw), you take a sip, and you keep most of the water in the front part of you mouth. If you flip up your head to drink from a bottle, water will naturally fall toward the back of your mouth. \n\nFortunately, the very back of your mouth will create a seal, so water will not fall into your throat. The soft palate (the very back of the roof of your mouth, where the dangly bit, the uvula, is) is stretched down, and the root (base) of your tongue is up, so they close up your mouth. The sides also contract a bit to help. You can still breath through your nose at that point. This means your epiglottis (the flappy thing that closes your airway) is up. \n\nThe seal can be imperfect, so some water can drip down. This is normally not a problem for healthy, young people, but can be a hazard for those with less control (the elderly, stroke or cancer patients, paresis patients, etc.). \n\n \n\nOnce you swallow, you don't have much control anymore over what happens, and can't stop it, it's mostly a series of reflexes. Lots of parts will move in a specific way to guide the water into your \"food-pipe\" (esophagus) and to close up your windpipe (trachea). Your epiglottis will close up your windpipe, and your voice box (larynx) will also be pulled up to better close the way. The esophagus passage will open up to let the water in. Some other parts will also move to close up your nasal cavity, so water doesn't come out of your nose.\n\n \n\nWhen you're done swallowing, everything resets, to let you breath easily (airways open, esophagus closed). \n\n \n\n\n^source:speech-language pathologist"
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} | train_eli5 | When you're drinking from a bottle, what stops more water from flowing down through your throat until you swallow?
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72ujie | Why do we add salt at various stages of the cooking process. Why not just add the seasoning all at once at the end? Does this have an affect on overall taste? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can have an effect on moisture and toughness of meats, salting too early can draw out moisture from the meat."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do we add salt at various stages of the cooking process. Why not just add the seasoning all at once at the end? Does this have an affect on overall taste?
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1kl7x3 | How are mAh (and amps in general) and voltage related in terms of batteries? | For instance in laptops, phones, toys and such. Specifically I guess i mean if you have higher voltage, does that affect how much the mAh is "worth"? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can think of voltage as a measure of electrical \"pressure\". Amperes are a measure of the number of electrons, and voltage is the concentration or \"pressure\" of electrons.\n\nImagine water in a pipe. if you increase the size of the pipe, the \"voltage\" drops and the \"amperage\" stays the same. if you decrease the size of the pipe, the \"voltage\" increases.",
"A milli-amp hour is how many milli-amps are drawn down in one hour. If a battery is rated at 2400 mAh and the device it is connected to draws a steady 100 milli-amps per hour, the battery will drain in 24 hours under ideal conditions.\n\nThe rated voltage of the battery is based on engineering specs and isn't really related to mAh for the purposes of this discussion.\n\n...But, since a \"battery\" is technically several cells that are soldered together, you could add a cell, which would raise the voltage and the mAh rating, but it wouldn't work in the device, so it's a moot point.\n\nEdit- It occurs to me that the question of batteries with different mAh ratings for the same device, like a high capacity battery for your cell phone, may come up. Less internal resistance due to better manufacturing materials and/or processes. Ohm's law. Voltage = Current (amps) x Resistance. If voltage stays the same, but current goes up, it must be because resistance came down.",
"Current (Amperes) is a measure of the amount of charge is being transmitted every second. Essentially a battery can only store so much charge. Essentially a 5000 mAh battery (this would be amazing quality for a cellphone battery), can transmit at 5 Amperes for 1 hour or 0.5 Amperes for 10 hours.\n\nVoltage is a measure of potential energy in each electron (Voltage is a measure of Joules (Energy) per Coulombe (a unit representing a large number of electrons). If something has a higher voltage, that a single unit of charge has more energy associated with it."
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} | train_eli5 | How are mAh (and amps in general) and voltage related in terms of batteries?
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rm6lu | What are the differences between a 12MP DSLR camera and a 12MP point and shoot camera in terms of quality of shots? | Also, if you attached the same kind of lens to both of the cameras with the same ISO, exposure, aperture, etc., would they produce the exact same shot? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Alright so there are a few things going on here. \n\nFirst, megapixels is no what determines the quality of a photo, but rather the clarity it will up to a certain size. For example, if you find a picture online you want to use as your computer wallpaper that is 800x600, but your resolution is 1440x900, the image will not look good. It will be stretched out and weird. Also, the reverse is true. If you take a large picture and crunch it into a small area, clarity is lost. \n\nSecond, you cannot attach a lens to point and shoot camera. DSLR's generally come with a stock lens(though the camera itself is just the body), and then you change the lens depending on how far away the target is.\n\nNext, shutter speed is generally higher on a DSLR than a P & S, so you can take pictures in quicker succession. Some P & S have a burst mode that takes 10 to 30 pictures or so but an DSLR will generally take the pictures in quicker succession(if you set it for that) and most of the ones I use to sell didn't have a limit of photos(they would shoot until the card was filled).\n\n ISO, exposure, and aperture are relative to the specific situation you are taking the picture, so if both cameras have the optimal settings for a specific setting, that won't be an issue. \n\nLast, DSLR's have larger image sensors, which is what determines the actual image quality.\n\nI take it you are thinking about buying a DSLR but are not sure?",
"A point and shoot camera's sensor is tiny compared to a DSLR's. The sensor's size more or less determines image quality, which is why a picture taken with a 12MP EOS 5D will be much more higher quality than one from a point and shoot, even though the settings may be the same. One of the biggest differences is noise performance; a full frame sensor will have much more cleaner looking shots at ISO 3200 than one from a point and shoot, which will have extremely grainy ones."
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} | train_eli5 | What are the differences between a 12MP DSLR camera and a 12MP point and shoot camera in terms of quality of shots?
Also, if you attached the same kind of lens to both of the cameras with the same ISO, exposure, aperture, etc., would they produce the exact same shot? | [
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m34po | why are mattresses so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Middlemen.\n\nLet's say I make a pillow, and I want to sell it, but I don't know who I would get it to.\n\nSo I tell my friend, Mr. Middleman, \"Hey, find someone to sell this to. I require that **I** get $8 out of it. Okay?\"\n\nHe says \"Okay.\" But he thinks to himself, \"If *I'm* gonna be the one to find someone to sell this to, **I** better make some money too!\"\n\nSo he ends up selling it to Bed Bath & Beyond. He sells it to them for $20. (But he gives me the 8 I asked for)\n\nSo BB & B wants to sell it to you, and they want to make a profit. So they sell it to you for $30.\n____________________\nIf I sold it to you, It'd be $8.\nIf Mr. Middleman sold it to you, it'd be $20.\nIf you got it from BB & B, it was $30.\n____________________\nNow Imagine that I made a mattress.\nAnd imagine that there's a zero on the end of ALL those numbers.",
"you spent 1/3rd of your life on them, they should be of reasonable quality."
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} | train_eli5 | why are mattresses so expensive?
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24akr6 | Why did Microsoft stop supporting/updating Internet Explorer for awhile, but then later decided to resume updates? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Microsoft never stopped supporting Internet Explorer. There was a period from 2001-2006 where Microsoft didn't release a new version of Internet Explorer (and they released basically nothing from 2003-2006) but that was because they were doing a security audit of all of their software after things like the Blaster worm caused a lot of damage, not because they stopped working on them."
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} | train_eli5 | Why did Microsoft stop supporting/updating Internet Explorer for awhile, but then later decided to resume updates?
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4c0pz2 | How does sharing a facebook post help the person who posted it? | For years I've noticed my friends sharing facebook posts supposidly giving away a Land Rover, or saying "1 Like = 1 Prayer". I've got to imagine there has to be some benefit for the poster of such useless posts. Meaningless Internet Points? Any Ideas? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Er...people like to think that others care about the stuff that they post. The fact that people like/share it shows that I guess? It's validation from others and adds to their self-esteem. Very toxic in nature though, when people rely on it to fuel their self confidence.\n\nIMO I find it really really pointless and sometimes annoying. I mean sure, there are posts that are really worth sharing, but most of the times people share redundant things.\n\nLook, I get that Facebook is a social media platform, but it feels more like a site for people to garner attention for themselves."
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} | train_eli5 | How does sharing a facebook post help the person who posted it?
For years I've noticed my friends sharing facebook posts supposidly giving away a Land Rover, or saying "1 Like = 1 Prayer". I've got to imagine there has to be some benefit for the poster of such useless posts. Meaningless Internet Points? Any Ideas? | [
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5emleq | Why, when presented with information contrary to their belief, do people tend to become more steadfast in their belief? | *_trump supporters_* /s | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What you believe is a major part of what makes you who you are. When certain core beliefs are threatened your identity is threatened and that is a terrifying thing that has destroyed many people throughout history. As such, when you are presented with highly contrary information, rather than finding it on your own by seeking it out your mind sees that as an attack on who you are and will often go into a defensive mode and \"double down\" on the belief rather than changing it. \n\nAnd despite what your \"joke\" says it is not something limited to conservatives and Trump supporters. Liberals are just as likely to do the same thing, and most assuredly did so during this election in almost equal numbers to conservatives.",
"One reason is that all information is based on how you know that information to be true.\n\nTo give a very simple but important example of this, compare how science \"knows\" something to how Christianity (Generalized: this isn't all of Christianity; but rather the conservative, \"Bible-thumpers\" seen in a lot of US media) \"knows\" something:\n\n- Science starts from the assumption that human perception is all we have, and so tests ideas by setting up things so humans can observe a difference in outcomes based on which of two ideas is right. An idea is \"true\" if it can reliably predict the outcomes of such observations.\n- Christianity starts from the assumption that human perception is imperfect; and that only God is perfect, and so tests ideas by comparing them to what people wrote about what God said to them, to see what most closely matches God's Word. An idea is \"true\" if it perfectly matches God's Word.\n\nWhat this leads to is that \"conflicting information\" often isn't: God's Word means nothing to a scientist, and the ability to predict human observations means nothing to someone who follows this brand of Christianity.\n\nThe larger issue is that there are multiple (many more than just the two here) bases for answering the question \"how do you know what you know?\"; and any information based in one model for understanding the world may or may not be of any value in another model.\n\nWhich means that \"information contrary to my belief\" is really just evidence that the people presenting the information *clearly* have no idea what is really true; which reinforces my beliefs.\n\nP.S.\n\nJust a list of different major \"ways of knowing\" seen frequently in the US news:\n\n- Hard science. I know what I know because I can reliably predict how an experiment will turn out based on what I know\n- Social science. I know what I know because I can somewhat reliably guess how people will act and react based on what I know\n- Math. I know what I know because my logic is internally consistent, and does not contradict other people who make the same assumptions I do.\n- Religion. I know what I know because a Divine Being said it.\n- Spirituality. I know what I know because it feels right to me.\n- Politics. I know what I know because people agree with me.\n- Conspiracy theorist. I know what I know because people with power disagree with me.",
"Identity formation. Your beliefs and opinions are part of that. Challenging your beliefs is challenging the you which you recognize yourself as.\n\nIt is changing you. And that is difficult to handle.",
"Several factors here. Sometimes the 'information' is not accurate, or pertains to something for which there is a large grey area that allows a large range of equally valid opinions. Other times it's the way the information is presented. Some people have an unfortunate habit of using information as a weapon. Doing that will naturally put people on the defensive. Other times it's the people delivering the message. You know the old saw 'don't shoot the messenger' ? Well again sadly, some messengers as such sanctimonious berks that they could say the sun will rise in the east and a normal person would immediately begin hoping the sun would rise in the west. These are the people who use the morpheus meme. Finally, sometimes people are simply pig headed and refuse to believe what's in front of them. This however, is truly rare. You can generally attribute failure to the conveyor of the information. Few people know how to engage and persuade."
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*_trump supporters_* /s | [
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4kt1q1 | how do companies like Amazon buy consumer products to resell and still make profit? | And why can't the public buy these products from the same place Amazon does | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They most likely make a deal with say Sony to sell a TV.\n\n We'll say the TV only really costs Sony $500/unit to produce. Sony will say that they will sell that TV to Best Buy (The _URL_0_ showroom) for $800/unit. Best Buy retails that TV for $1,200/unit.\n\nBest Buy gets that price from Sony because they will tell Sony that each quarter they are going to buy 10,000 units to sell in its stores and online.\n\nAmazon comes in and says we're going to buy that same exact model of TV as Best Buy, except at a rate of 25,000 units/quarter. So they are going to get a price from Sony for say $600/unit. And here's the best part, Amazon isn't even going to stick that item, they are going to have it drop shipped from Sony directly to you. So because Amazon has no real overhead on that TV they are going to sell it for $800/unit. They'll make $200/unit for just being the middle man to process your order.\n\nBest Buy on the other hand has a ton of overhead for selling products. Yes they both have warehouse space and pickers at those warehouses, but Amazon doesn't have brick and mortar stores. So that's an additional 25,000 less employees it has to pay, an additional overhead for 2,000 retail stores that has to be baked into the price of every single item.\n\nLet me know if I am totally off base of not.",
"Why would you think Amazon buying them be any different than Wal-Mart, Taget, Walgreens, etc. buying those consumer products? You want the same pricing on a consumer product that Amazon pays... you'd better be able to place a $1million order for diapers, or order TVs 10,000 at a time.\n\nNow Amazon can often undercut a brick-and-mortar retailer because they don't have 1000's of stores. They can use a few giant warehouses, in cheaper areas, and better optimize staffing due to fewer locations, ability to shift orders to another warehouse if overloaded, etc. One Target might be swamped while another is dead, but both have to be staffed when opened. And fewer, bigger locations means less likelihood of being sold out -- say, 10 warehouses with 1000 TVs vs. 1000 stores sent 10 each.",
"The question is basically \"Why do manufacturers sell through a network of re-sellers and not direct to customers\". \n\nI work in manufacturing, so I'll answer as best as I can.\n\nSome manufacturers do sell direct to customers. Some sell direct to customers and through re-sellers. Some sell only through re-sellers. It just depends on how the manufacturer wants to do business. I've done the \"selling direct and through re-sellers\" and \"just through re-sellers\" models. Selling through re-sellers saves a lot of time and headache when it comes to order fullfillment. If I only sell direct to end users, and I sell 1000 pairs of socks, that means I have to create 1000 shipping lables and pack up 1000 individual pairs of socks. That takes quite a long time. If I sell that same 1000 pairs of socks to a department store, that's one, or a few, shipping labels and I don't have to individually pack up each pair of socks. I can just throw a bunch of pairs of socks in a box and call it a day. So, there's that. Re-sellers get a certain percentage off the full retail price as a discount. This is called their \"margin\". On one of my product lines dealers get 35% margin if they order a certain amount of product from me. Now...if I sell my products direct, I don't lose that margin. So, if I have a widget that retails at $100, and I sell it through a re-seller, I've only sold it for $65. If that widget costs me $30 to make, I've made $35 on it by selling it through a re-seller. BUT, if I sell that widget directly to the end user, I've made $70 on it. If it is easy to sell my widget directly to you, then I'll do it. If it is a pain to do hundreds of individual orders a day, then I'll just sell through re-sellers and sell the same amount of volume, take the hit on my margin, but only have to ship a few large boxes each day. Let's also not forget that the widget I sell is sold in a store with related items, like doohickies and whatnots. Think Best Buy or the grocery store. When you go to the grocery store you are going to buy groceries. When I go, I'll have a list of stuff that I need. I wouldn't want to have to buy all those things separately from the individual suppliers. That'd be a pain in the ass for me. I'd rather get it all from one place. \n\nDoes any of that make sense?",
"They typically buy directly from the manufacturer or a business to business distributor. There are several reasons why they can get a product cheaper than you can. Mostly it's because they can order in huge quantities, most consumers aren't willing to buy a truck load of toilet paper for example. Many manufacturers don't want to deal directly with end consumers either because it's more of a hassle than only selling to other businesses. For example, you typically don't have to calculate and charge sales tax when selling to another business.",
"They buy in quantity at a wholesale price from the manufacturer or distributor. That means that the maker of the product sells it to them at somewhere around 45% of what you would pay amazon for it. They get that deal because they buy a lot of whatever it is.",
"They buy in bulk and therefore get cheaper rates. \n\nYou know how you get a lower price per unit if you buy stuff in bulk at Costco instead of smaller quantities at Safeway? Now imagine if you were buying millions of units, you'd get an even better price.",
"Big factory machines are really expensive and take time to set up and configure. So while the cost of your resources can be extremely low, your machine is works optimal if it can just produce thousands of T-shirts with the same design. All you have to do is feed it more resources. If you let everyone order single T-shirts you have to pay someone to change the settings of the machine every time and you spend more time preparing the machine instead of producing something. \n\nThat's why buying in bulk is a lot cheaper than buying separate items.",
"Marketing and distribution has a big cost. You have to collect information about the customer, help them select, purchase and receive the product, handle product issues and returns, stock inventory...it's a long list. The producer of a product makes products available to retailers at a wholesale price, and then retailers include a markup to cover their costs of marketing and distribution. \n\n\nA factory is not a store, so you can't get the same consumer experience from a factory that you can from a store."
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And why can't the public buy these products from the same place Amazon does | [
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3l6iy1 | why can't I donate blood if I had hepatitis B | when I was around 6 yo I was diagnosed with hepatitis B, I don't remember much about it just my parents being worried all the time about my condition. however I was told later that I will no longer be able to donate blood and I really never asked why. I would like to know if blood gets cleaned over time or something. thanks everyone | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While this happened a long time ago, and in all likelihood, you are now free of Hepatitis B, blood banks don't want to take the risk that they may infect someone else with hepatitis B. The nature of viruses is that they are very hardy. Just because you don't have symptoms doesn't mean that you aren't still infected. If you are still infected, the reason you don't have symptoms is because your immune system is controlling the spread of the virus and preventing symptoms. \n\nHowever, consider this example: If you were to donate blood, and that blood sample happened to be contaminated with Hep B, and that contaminated sample went to an anemic cancer patient (with a compromised immune system). That patient would have liver failure in no time (Hep B attacks the liver) because that patient would not be able to fight off the Hepatitis B infection. The overall point of this example is to emphasize that it isn't worth the risk for the blood banks."
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} | train_eli5 | why can't I donate blood if I had hepatitis B
when I was around 6 yo I was diagnosed with hepatitis B, I don't remember much about it just my parents being worried all the time about my condition. however I was told later that I will no longer be able to donate blood and I really never asked why. I would like to know if blood gets cleaned over time or something. thanks everyone | [
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2td99l | What's the difference between regular gas and premium gas? | Does the better one last longer or what is it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The difference is the octane ratings. Premium gas has a higher octane rating. The higher the octane rating the less likely the fuel is to ignite under heat and pressure. When your engine is running very hot and hard sometimes the fuel ignites before the spark lights, this is very bad because the fuel is burning when the piston is moving upwards.\n\nPremium fuel does not last longer because your car's computer will inject the same amount of fuel.",
"Regular gas has a lower octane level than premium gas. Engines that have higher compression ratios (where the piston comes to top dead center) in the cylinder bore need higher octane to run smooth and prevent damage to the reciprocating parts."
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4e4v5u | The concept of cardinal numbers; accessible, inaccessible, and beyond | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cardinal numbers are what you get when you put red paint under someone's shoes and ask them to walk forever in the same direction, on a plane. They have a starting point, 0, and no ending point, as we assume our walker does not stop.\nThen, you take whatever set of objects you wish to know how many of you have, and you line them up next to the tracks. Your take some chalk, and make a line between each object and a different red stain every time. Assuming you started at the second red stain, the first one being 0, and named all your stains, you are able to assign a value to this set's cardinal, alias the name or 'value' of the last stain.\n\n This, mathematically speaking, is known as one-on-one mapping onto a subset of N, and how you define the cardinal of a set.\n\n \n So by this rule, every number is accessible by simply walking further. This is known as the principle of recurrence. Infinity is obviously not a cardinal number, as there would be no \"infinity plus one\".\n\n\n What about beyond? Mathematicians acknowledge different 'amplitudes of infinity'. Cardinal numbers are the simplest form of infinity, a discrete one. The way we known they are an infinite set, is that if we remove the one red stain, we can still walk forever on the other red stains. \n Now, every set that can be related to the Cardinal set (ie draw chalk lines between every two different elements) is \\aleph_0 (I hope that works) in infinity.\n\n \n I don't know what you mean by beyond, I guess I could try explaining how you build rational numbers out of N, and then the set of real numbers. Or I could have a shot at illustrating the different flavours of infinity. \n\n I hope this wasn't too confusing, I don't really speak English.",
"ELI5 might not be the best place for higher logic. I don't believe that any five-year-old in the history of humanity has had the ability to understand inaccessible cardinals. \n\nThat said, here is an informal (and quite good) set of introductory notes aimed at non-set theorist mathematicians on the topic of large cardinals: _URL_0_",
"A Cardinal Number is a number that says how many of something there are, such as one, two, three, four, five. A Cardinal Number answers the question \"How Many?\" Example: here are five coins: It does not have fractions or decimals, as it is only used for counting.",
"I don't know if you watched vsause's newest video or not. if you did, great. I am just as confused as you. If not, I don't recommended watching it because you still probably won't understand"
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4a18kh | How does what we eat and drink eventually become so much different stuff like skin, brain cells, hormones etc.? Are our fingernails really just remnants of dinners gone by? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What we eat is essentially building blocks for our body. When we digest the food, our body breaks the pieces apart into individual blocks. Our body then reassembles the building blocks in a different order to create the parts it needs. Some of the food is used as energy for this reassembly to occur. But yes, you are essentially made out of the food that you eat.",
"Basically all the food we eat consists of the raw materials the body needs to form new cells and tissues. These raw materials, however, are packaged up into things like proteins and complex carbohydrates. \n\nOur bodies digestive system breaks down these materials into compounds small enough for it to use in numerous functions. \n\nThe mouth physically breaks apart food and saliva begins digestion of carbohydrates. The stomach physically and chemically breaks down food yet again. The small intestine digests proteins into smaller proteins or amino acids. Further down the small intestine and in the large intestine, all the food has been broken down into small enough compounds to be absorbed into the blood stream. The compounds then travel in the blood stream to numerous locations in the body to either be used immediately or stored for future use."
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5455yl | What do climate change deniers feel the motivation is behind the claim of man-made climate change? | In other words, what's the perceived motive? Deniers feel that those who claim climate change is real must feel that there is a motive behind it. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> In other words, what's the perceived motive? \n\nThe assignment of motives doesn't start until you propose to **do something** about human caused climate change. Even deniers accept that the scientists are making measurements, most just don't share the conclusion that **Government needs to do something**.\n\nOnce you see the problem as **Government: do something**, motives become clear. Anti-government people don't like the idea that Government needs more power to regulate more of our lives. To them, denying the need to **do something** means that government should not get more power, which resonates with their belief system.\n\nThen it depends on what the **something** is. If the **something** is to spend a lot of money on projects like solar and nuclear power, then the anti-government spending types are unhappy because these projects are hugely expensive. The NIMBYs are upset that a nearby power facility might hurt their property values. They see denying the need to **do something** as a means to prevent a **something** they don't like. Finally there are the pro-carbon folks. These folks benefit financially from the current energy system. If changes make that into a different **something**, then they lose money. They tend to try to get the government to pick a different **something** that won't work, like carbon capture and sequestration. That way the government action will fail and nothing will change.",
"> In other words, what’s the perceived motive?\n\nObviously there are countless reasons why someone might be against climate change but most of the people I have spoken with who are not convinced about climate change are not precisely opposed to the observed reality of a changing average temperature.\n\nTheir view is that while the temperature is changing it isn't precisely clear how much is the result of human activity, and this is based upon the perceived motive of obtaining government money to combat climate change.\n\nFor example, Al Gore puts out a bleeding-heart video about climate change. He also invested heavily in companies which combat practices which increase atmospheric carbon. Seen in the best light this is putting his money where his mouth is; seen in the worst light it is trying to adjust public policy to direct tax money into his own pocket. \n\nThese are the issues most \"climate-change deniers\" I have encountered are concerned about. Things like solar power and wind farms are more expensive than the old standards of coal or oil; if they weren't there would be no debate because industry would be flocking to them of their own accord. Because they are more expensive the campaigning about global warming usually centers around ways to force private industry to use more expensive sources for their energy, either with subsidies taken from tax or just rules demanding they use \"renewable\" energy or the like.\n\nIt is natural to be a bit suspicious when the owner of a solar cell production company tells you that his product is more expensive than alternatives but you should buy it anyway to stave off global catastrophe. *He might be right.* But it rings all the warning bells of scams and cheats.\n\nAlso I see much higher rates of this in demographics which are predisposed to viewing many politicians as lining their pockets with manipulation of public policy. How did the Clintons go from a net worth of about $1 million in 1992 to $111 million in 2016? Their salaries aren't $4.5 million a year. Speaking fees? Investments which are mysteriously far more successful than other people's? Everyone knows politics is dirty and full of graft. Many climate change deniers just see talk of NYC being flooded as another way of stealing tax dollars.",
"The most coherent arguments against climate change science revolve around the people backing it, and the plans proposed to 'fix' climate change. \n\nTheir belief is that the same scientists arguing now that the world is warming uncontrollably were the same ones in the 70's arguing that the world was cooling uncontrollably. This science is then pushed by mostly left-leaning democrats who have wide investments in renewable energy firms and lobbying organizations. Combined with that is the difficulty to see the incremental effects of climate change in every-day life, and it becomes much easier to think that scientists/politicians have overblown the threat.\n\nThe other side to that argument is the people pushing fixes for climate change appear to have selfish motives in the companies/technologies they invest in. There is a lot of push for wind and solar as renewable fixes, but the technology to make them every-day replacements for coal, natural gas, and nuclear doesn't exist yet. Add to that very public bankruptcies like Solyndra and it appears like there is a left-wing conspiracy to funnel money into companies that will make a few people rich at the cost of taxpaying citizens. That fear is extended into the idea that climate change supporters would tear down our economy right now over a fear of something that will happen later.",
"Mostly to hold back industrial progress and as an excuse for the government to seize control from private energy companies and/or get government contracts with companies they own or that donate large sums of money to the politicians' reelection campaigns and/or to create fake \"projects\" that they send money to while actually embezzling it. Then there's the Trump \"logic\" which is that China made it up because something something mumble ^mumble ^^mumble ^^^mumble... Presumably the argument is that China is trying to cripple our economy by encouraging us to adopt restrictions on carbon emissions so our industry slows down, while they ignore most of the restrictions and get ahead of us (which is dumb on two counts: 1) They are adopting a lot of the proposed limitations on their own industry and power, and 2) Their economy is dangerously close to crashing, and it doesn't crash in large part because of the US economy buying and selling to them).\n\nIn any case, the average denier probably doesn't think there's a sinister motive behind it so much as scientists who don't really know what they're talking about and have it wrong, and they're either just misinformed or trying to publish \"exciting\" results to make money. The crazy deniers are so deep into a convoluted train of delusions that I'm sure teasing the motivation out involves multiple levels of conspiracies that involve the government lying about climate change so the Rothschilds can take over wallstreet except they already control wallstreet so it's just a ruse to hide their power etc. etc.",
"I can tell you my issues with it. It's the fact that it's completely ignored that the Earth is currently at or near peak in it's natural climate change cycle. I'm not saying that the science is ignoring this but it seems that statements from scientists are, and also the media, completely leaving this fact out. Therefor when they say \"Climate change\" and \"Man-made Climate Change\" they appear to be *blaming* all of climate change on mankind, when in fact we're only responsible for the tiniest little fraction of recent changes.\n\nI don't deny that mankind is doing harm to Earths climate or that we need to change and if we don't that fraction will only grow larger and the consequences greater. It just doesn't sit right with me that there's this 'white lie' about climate change when the fact is if humans had never been around the Earth would be heating up without them because that's the part in it's natural cycle we're in.\n\n$0.02 ☮",
"Two main reasons: \n\n1) Money. E.g., Al Gore's net worth is over $200 million, much of that from his work on global warming. Plenty of other companies are also in the \"green energy\" business and benefit from whipping up a global warming hysteria.\n\n2) Power. Where there's money, there's power. More regulations mean more government power.",
"The positive feedback loop of scientists continually needing to secure government grants to keep their job. Which results in continually publishing results saying more study is needed or bad things can happen."
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In other words, what's the perceived motive? Deniers feel that those who claim climate change is real must feel that there is a motive behind it. | [
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4obn8z | What is the no true scotsman theory? | Something that mostly has to do with politics, and religion, but that is all I know. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's where you make a statement, and someone finds an exception to what you just said, and so you come up with a non-reason why the exception doesn't count.\n\n[Wikipedia](_URL_0_) gives this example:\n\nPerson A: \"No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.\" \nPerson B: \"But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge.\" \nPerson A: \"Ah yes, but no *true* Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.\"\n\nIt's a kind of circular reasoning. The example of Uncle Angus disproves the first statement, so person A decides that Uncle Angus isn't really a Scottsman and he doesn't count. I say \"All X are Y\" but then I go on to *define* X as something that's Y, discarding the generally-accepted definition of X.",
"It's a fallacy in making arguments. For example, you say that \"no Scotsman believes in free market economics.\" When someone shows that that statement is false, e.g. by reference to Scottish economist Adam Smith, you change your statement to \"no *true* Scotsman believes in free market economics.\"\n\nThe problem is that in this scenario you can define \"*true* Scotsman\" to mean anything you want and prove yourself right. Your argument becomes circular.",
"Relevant: A list of each type of logical fallacy. I believe it's one of the most important things you can memorize.\n_URL_1_"
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} | train_eli5 | What is the no true scotsman theory?
Something that mostly has to do with politics, and religion, but that is all I know. | [
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3blmn9 | Why doesn't the ocean's water leak out the bottom and into the earth's crust/mantle? The ocean bottom can't be completely free of fissures, can it? | I was looking at the ocean the other day and wondering how it just contains all of its water. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"* the water doesn't have anywhere to go. There aren't gaping holes for stuff to fall into. Any holes there are has stuff coming out (lava), not stuff going in.\n* any water that does actually make it to a hole gets turned to steam pretty quickly (by the lava), and starts going right back up.\n* rock is more dense than water. That doesn't just mean that rocks sink in water, that means that water _floats_ on rocks. The natural place that water wants to be in relation to a rock is above it, in the same way a beach ball wants to be above water.",
"There is actually a lot of water below the ocean. It does not exist so much as water but as rocks combined with water. Many minerals consist of water combined with the other elements.\n\nMore water is actually in the Earth's crust than in the Ocean. Beautiful minerals are formed. Quartz seams in sedimentary rocks form when water moves to the surface. The quartz precipitates out as the pressure changes.\n\nRain water penetrating into the Earth over a billion years ago caused natural uranium atomic reactors to operate. The heat produced would drive the water away after a few hours stopping the reaction. \n\nThe geysers at yellowstone are examples of water in the Earth and what happens. This is mostly rainwater.\n\nAt fault lines where subduction occurs the crustal rocks moving under other crustal rocks are mostly saturated with water which means the minerals formed have water incorporated into their structure. Which minerals formed depends on the pressure which depends on the depth the subduction goes to.\n\nSo the simple answer is that the salt water of the oceans is less dense than the rocks below it. So the least dense thing stays above the more dense rocks mostly. But on a more complicated level they mix."
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} | train_eli5 | Why doesn't the ocean's water leak out the bottom and into the earth's crust/mantle? The ocean bottom can't be completely free of fissures, can it?
I was looking at the ocean the other day and wondering how it just contains all of its water. | [
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3vqy6e | Why are my USA made Craftsman tools better than my neighbors China made Craftsman tools? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because of higher quality standards and price. But if you are willing to pay same price for the Chinese counterparts, they'll be better.But the first thing we think about Chinese stuff is that it got to be less expensive and that is where the problem stands.we go so cheap that the thing aren't really worth buying."
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} | train_eli5 | Why are my USA made Craftsman tools better than my neighbors China made Craftsman tools?
| [
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58v5td | Why can diesel engines not rev as highly as petrol engines? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a petrol engine, the fuel is designed to ignite smoothly and burn in a controlled manner. This causes even, smooth heating in the combustion chamber, and produces a smooth force on the piston.\n\nIn a diesel engine, the fuel ignites spontaneously and explodes as soon as it is injected. This explosion causes a shock wave in the combustion chamber which slams into the piston. The reason diesel engines have that characteristic rattling sound, is this. Each \"tick\" sound, is the sound of shockwave bouncing off the combustion chamber.\n\nBecause diesel engines have to withstand these shockwaves, the pistons have to be heavier, so that they don't get smashed. \n\nThe problem is that the piston has to move up and down the cylinder every time the engine turns. This means that the entire weight of the piston has to be accelerated and decelerated and reversed direction. The faster the engine revs the faster the acceleration. The heavier the piston, the greater the force needed to do this. This force puts more stress on the bearings and the crankshaft.\n\nSo, to prevent the crankshaft, bearings and connecting rods getting bent by the moving heavy pistons up and down (and the extra force from the shockwaves), the engine has to have a lower maximum speed.",
"The faster the revs on the engine the less time each piston has for a full travel of its stroke. \n \nDiesel fuel combusts slower than petrol and therefore cannot complete strokes much faster.",
"Diesel engines tend to have longer strokes, i.e., a stroke length that's greater than the bore diameter. Engines with long strokes don't rev as easily.\n\n_URL_0_"
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| [
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33s40t | Where do nuclear power plants get their nuclear materials from? | How do nuclear plants squire the nuclear rods or however it works. Are they just shipped to them on a truck? Where do the rods come from? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Similar to gold, it is in the ground. People dig it up, crush the rocks it is found in and collect it. Only a few countries do it. Once it has been collected, some other guys make sure it is pure enough and that it has the right amounts of the right isotope. Once that is done, they form it into pellets and ship it off to the power plants.",
"Uranium is mined from the ground. [There are deposits of uranium in some places in the world, and these uranium mines will mine this material just like any other iron mine or copper mine.](_URL_2_)\n\nOnce mined the valuable material must be separated from worthless rock and the worthless rock discarded. Again, this is similar to any iron mine. Iron ore is valuable, the rock it is embedded in is worthless. Try to separate out as much ore from rock as possible before you leave the mine. The more you separate it out early on the less work is needed later. [Something called \"yellowcake\" is what you get partway through this refining process.](_URL_0_) Yellowcake still has a lot of useless material in it, but each step of the process reduces the percentage of useless stuff while increasing the percentage of uranium.\n\nOnce you've got uranium ore of a high enough yield %, then start refining it. This extracts as much of the desired materials out of the rock as possible. Again, leftover rock is discarded. Smelting will produce lots of useless slag which is discarded. Your goal is to eliminate as much useless stuff as possible and keep only the pure metal. This is the same process for iron smelting or copper smelting. The end result of this smelting process is almost pure uranium ingots.\n\nIts nearly pure uranium, but its not the right kind of uranium for nuclear fuel. There are different isotopes. Some isotopes are far more valuable than others. [The uranium is made in to a gas and then spun in a centrifuge.](_URL_1_)\n\nThis separates out the isotopes as they have different density. More than 99% of the uranium in your ingot is useless uranium. It just isn't potent enough. A small percentage, < 1%, is the potent stuff. You have to separate out this potent stuff from the useless, non-potent uranium. These rare isotopes are the powerful ones which are useful for running nuclear reactors or producing giant mushroom clouds.\n\nOnce you've spun enough uranium gas at high enough speeds you can collect the desired isotope. In the case of nuclear fuel, you now have enriched uranium.\n\nThis enriched uranium can be worked like any other metal, albeit with much higher security precautions than an ordinary steel mill. The metal can be melted down and poured into whatever shape is desired. Security must be maintained because this material is radioactive and it is also very valuable. Some groups or countries would love to get their hands on uranium for potentially nefarious purposes.\n\nNow you've got enriched uranium shaped in whatever form you like. Are they fuel rods? Are they half-spheres for nuclear cores to build bombs? Whatever you build with them is up to you.\n\nAnd yes, they are shipped either by trail or truck, same with anything else. The difference is that they're shipped with a great deal of security, very often multiple vehicles and an armed guard."
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} | train_eli5 | Where do nuclear power plants get their nuclear materials from?
How do nuclear plants squire the nuclear rods or however it works. Are they just shipped to them on a truck? Where do the rods come from? | [
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2fkqam | How is it that rich kids in can get into the best and presumably most exclusive (e.g. Ivy League) colleges, despite having average or poor grades in high school? | I am British and am primarily interested in the question as it pertains to American colleges - these are the ones most widely known, albeit anecdotally as far as I am concerned, for this sort of thing. However, if you have a particular insight into why this sort goes on elsewhere (the UK included), you are are more than welcome to share it. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Give an example of a rich kid getting into an Ivy League with poor High School grades... I think you will be hard pressed to find one. Sounds like you are trying to say that rich people don't have to have good grades to get into college, which is a not true generalization. \n\nThat being said, many private schools take a few Legacy students each year. These might be the people you are talking about. Where they are accepted to keep big family donations coming. I don't think it's as big of a fraction as you think though. Those kids still don't get poor grades in most case. They may be average though....\n\nIvy Leagues like any other school want the smartest kids. Taking dumb rich kids doesn't help them advertise that they are the best school in the world.",
"Think this is more myth than reality.\n\nHowever, in the extremely unlikely case this actually happens it's only due to legacy and HUGE Donations... \n\nBut even then, you'd better be able to pull your weight, NONE of the Ivy leagues is giving away diplomas."
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} | train_eli5 | How is it that rich kids in can get into the best and presumably most exclusive (e.g. Ivy League) colleges, despite having average or poor grades in high school?
I am British and am primarily interested in the question as it pertains to American colleges - these are the ones most widely known, albeit anecdotally as far as I am concerned, for this sort of thing. However, if you have a particular insight into why this sort goes on elsewhere (the UK included), you are are more than welcome to share it. | [
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7kbxsx | how do two brown haired people create a blonde baby? | My baby came out super blonde, which was shocking as both my husband and I are brunettes, all our parents and siblings are brunettes, and our first kiddo is a brunette. The only non dark haired person in my descendants was a grandmother who had light brown hair. Yes, I'm the mom, and yes, my husband is the daddy. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Could be that you carry the gene, as does the father. \n\nGenes can be determined using Punnett squares, specific gene combinations are given letters, either capital or lowercase. Capital letters denote a dominant trait that will mask a recessive trait, marked with a lowercase letter.\n\nIn this example I’ll say that hair colours brown and blonde are given the letter B.\n\nBB = brown hair\nBb = brown hair but carries the blonde gene\nbb = blonde hair\n\nIt’s likely that you and your husband both have Bb hair genes:\n\nBb x Bb \n\nThis is worked out in a grid format (usually better written down)\n\nx B b\n\nB BB Bb \n\nb Bb bb \n\nThe letters of the parents genes are ‘crossed’ over each other, capital letters always go first because they are the dominant gene. \n\nSo this means you’d produce:\n25 % BB (brown hair only)\n50 % Bb (brown hair carrying blonde gene)\n25 % bb (blonde hair)\n\n= 75 % chance of brown haired kid, 25 % chance of blonde. \n\nThe probability resets with each child, so it’s possible for you to have more blonde haired kids than brown if the blonde gene happens to strike. \n\nI’m sure other people can explain it better, I’m only using my year 12 biology knowledge but I tried, hope it helps!",
"In addition to the previous replies, some people are born with very blond hair that darkens over time. They have genes for darker hair but they have not switched on yet.",
"The genetics of hair color haven't fully been teased out yet, but it seems that the genes for blonde hair are recessive compared to the genes for brown hair. So if both genes are present, the person will have brown hair. Only when - by chance - a child only gets the blonde genes from its parents will the hair be blonde.\n\nWhat this could mean is that both you and your husband have recessive blonde genes that aren't apparent because you also have the dominant brown genes but your child, by pure randomness, only got those blonde hair genes.",
"Brown hair is dominant over blonde hair, so you need 1 brown gene for brown hair or 2 blonde genes for blonde hair. Everyone has 2 of each gene, but they can be different variations. So both you and your husband must have one brown hair gene and one blonde hair gene. The baby will inherit one gene randomly selected from each parent.\n\nSo the baby needs 1 brown hair gene to get brown hair or 2 blonde hair genes to get blonde hair. The odds are 75% for brown hair and 25% for blond hair. You got lucky.\n\n\nWe don't know how a lot of genes work but we understand this gene well."
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} | train_eli5 | how do two brown haired people create a blonde baby?
My baby came out super blonde, which was shocking as both my husband and I are brunettes, all our parents and siblings are brunettes, and our first kiddo is a brunette. The only non dark haired person in my descendants was a grandmother who had light brown hair. Yes, I'm the mom, and yes, my husband is the daddy. | [
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69eo26 | How come you can put your finger in a bubble if your finger is wet, but not if it is dry? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Water is made up of many tiny molecules.\nThese molecules are too small to be seen with our unaided eyes.\n\nOne drop of water is made up of thousands of water molecules.\n\nThese molecules are attracted to each other (polar molecules) and they stick together creating a force called surface tension.\n\nSurface tension is one of water’s most important and salient properties.\n\nIt is the reason why water collects in drops instead of falling apart.\n\nSurface tension also causes the water to have a dome shape when you fill a glass up to the rim.\n\nSoap weakens the surface tension of water.\n\nIt also forms a very thin skin that is more flexible than water’s surface.\n\nWhen air is blown into the soap solution, air gets trapped under the surface of the more flexible skin, stretching it into a sphere shape and making a bubble.\n\nA bubble pops when the water trapped between layers of soap drys up (evaporate).\n\nTherefore, when your finger is wet, the bubble does not burst."
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} | train_eli5 | How come you can put your finger in a bubble if your finger is wet, but not if it is dry?
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5jjyxp | How are dead bodies brought back overseas? | Are there special boat/airplane carriers for bodies? I would assume legal procedures to be fairly complex too, especially in third-world countries. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Effectively any boat or plane capable of carrying a coffin can be used to bring a body back to a country. The process of moving a body overseas is called \"repatriation\"\n\nWhen someone dies overseas, the death must be registered with the local authorities, and they must give permission for the body to be repatriated from their country.\n\nOnce Released, the body is usually then taken to an undertaker or morgue who specialises in Repatriation in the country where the person died, and prepared for the journey overseas. The body will need to be certified as free from infection for most Repatriations, and embalmed to prevent further decomposition on the journey. Once this is done the body can be transported overseas.\n\nThe body is then placed in a Zinc-Lined coffin to meet international airline cargo standards, and flown to the destination country. It can also be transported by sea however this is far less common as the length of time is longer. An exception would be short sea journeys such as England to France.\n\nOnce the body lands, like any person/cargo it must go through Customs and be allowed into the country. Customs may inspect the body for signs of disease, and to ensure it is the correct body being bought back. Once released the body is the property of the next of kin or responsible person/organisation and is disposed of as any other deceased.\n\nThis whole process is very expensive, and could easily cost several thousand dollars. Thus, many people who die overseas are cremated and their ashes are repatriated, this is often much much cheaper and easier than bringing a body back overseas, and is by far the most common way of bringing someones remains overseas.\n\nIf nobody claims the body and there is nobody to pay for repatriation, it is often cremated or buried in the country where they died.",
"Most often they are brought by via air, usually on commercial flights in the environmentally controlled zone of the cargo hold.\n\nOn a slightly related note, when Singapore Airlines used to fly Newark to Singapore, the A340-500 aircraft used to have onboard facilities to store bodies in the event they died during the flight (18+ hours).\n\nIt was effectively a cupboard with straps internally that would house an average sized body if required.\n\nEdit: To clarify, no such \"cupboards\" are in use any longer. Often deceased passengers are moved to a quiet area (or passengers moved where possible) and covered in blankets and secured across a number of seats laid down. It's also not unheard of for deceased passengers to be moved into a first class seat if such facilities are available where individuals have private spaces that can be shut off from the rest of the cabin (Emirates for example)."
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} | train_eli5 | How are dead bodies brought back overseas?
Are there special boat/airplane carriers for bodies? I would assume legal procedures to be fairly complex too, especially in third-world countries. | [
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kq79g | How can you time travel if you are going faster than the speed of light? | With the fundamental pillars of physics being questioned as of late I keep hearing this pop up. Why does going faster than the speed of light leave open the opportunity for time travel? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ok. From what I understand, here goes:\n\nFirst, imagine that time is a road on which you can only move forward at certain speed.\n\nNow, Imagine you have two number lines. One number line is labeled \"Speed through Time\" and the other is labeled \"Speed through Space\". Each line goes from 0 to the speed of light. If you are completely still (as in floating in interstellar space unmoving) you are moving through time at the speed of light (bear with me). So, your \"speed through time\" bar is full, while your \"speed through space\" bar is empty. Now, you ignite a little rocket and start moving at 100 km per second. To move through space at a speed, you have to take a little away from moving through time. Now, your \"speed through space\" bar as a little bit filled in, and your \"speed through time\" has a little bit taken away. If you want to go faster and faster through space, you have to keep taking that speed out of your \"speed through time\" and put it in your \"speed through space\" bar. Let's say you are now moving through space at very close to the speed light. Your \"speed through space\" bar is almost full, while your \"speed through time\" bar is almost empty. If you want to move through space at the speed of light, you need to take away all your speed from the time bar. Now suppose you want to travel even faster through space. Your time bar is empty at this point. Where are you going to get the extra speed? You keep pulling from the time bar. Your time bar is now in the negatives. You're moving through time at a negative speed. Or, better yet, you're moving in the opposite direction down the time road (mentioned at the beginning). So, your time bar is reading less than zero, and your \"speed through space\" bar is now past the speed of light. So now, you are moving faster than the speed of light through space, and travelling backwards in time.\n\nSorry if this isn't actually a \"LI5\" explanation. Could try to clarify.\n\n**tl;dr:** Any speed you want to go through space must be taken out of your speed through time. If you want to go faster than the speed of light (v(s)=c+dv), you must take away all your speed through time and then take a little more (v(t)=0-dv) making your time speed negative/making you go backwards in time.",
"There was a young woman named Bright\n\nWhose speed was much faster than light.\n\nShe set out one day\n\nIn a relative way,\n\nAnd returned on the previous night.\n\n ~ Anonymous",
"There's something absolutely essential being missed by everyone here: the same theory that says faster than light speed should result in a time reversal also says that *nothing can accelerate past the speed of light*. If these neutrinos (which are produce from proton beams that are initially at rest) are really travelling faster than the speed of light, then there's a problem with the theory and there's no longer any reason to believe it should result in a time reversal. Briefly: bits about \"time travel\" are a direct consequence of saying that nothing can go faster than light. If something *can* go faster, all bets are off.",
"If backwards time travel was possible, it would have happened in the future. damn",
"If I am traveling the speed of light, and I push my hand from my side to out in front of me; was my hand just moving faster than the speed of light during the time I was moving it? (Relative to an observer?)",
"I'm going to use a few videos on YouTube as I feel its easier to show some of this visually than trying to explain it. One problem is that most all of the simplified analogies used is that they all tend to fall apart in different scenarios.\n\nTraveling forwards in time has been shown to exist through modern experimentation. The recent discovery doesn't really change this. For a good explanation of time dilation esp. traveling forwards in time, I like this video:\n_URL_0_\n\nIn that example, if you take it further, at the speed of light the photon in the light clock to an observer wouldn't appear to bounce up and down and time (for the person on the ship) would effectively stop. If time for him stops, time for the observer would effectively be infinitely fast. If there were an \"end of time\" of the universe, you'd experience it the instant you hit the speed of light.\n\nThis is the best video that could explain traveling backwards in time; the good part starts at 6m18s (if the embedded bookmark doesnt work):\n_URL_1_\n\nIf you take that example a step further, if you're going faster than the speed of light, you'll start to see the light from the clock tower that has already passed you. You would see the clock start going backwards. While you are seeing the clock go backwards, the people at the clock are seeing it go forwards.\n\nThe biggest problem, though, is all that takes into account that everything we know about the laws of physics are correct. If in fact we've taken a particle from rest and accelerated it past the speed of light, we've done what the modern laws of physics have said is completely impossible.",
"Watch Einstein by the history channel. The concept of time travel is very well explained among other things."
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} | train_eli5 | How can you time travel if you are going faster than the speed of light?
With the fundamental pillars of physics being questioned as of late I keep hearing this pop up. Why does going faster than the speed of light leave open the opportunity for time travel? | [
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2bfekn | Second Quality Idealism (Epistemology, Philosophy) | After Galileo Galilei distinguished between objective primary qualities (extension, solidity, arguably motion) and subjective secondary qualities (color, taste, smell, sound...), some thinkers (Descartes, Kant?) found the approach of "second quality idealism". What does this term mean?
(I found out that it is not the same as Berkeley's idea of "subjective idealism", i.e. that everything is subjective and primary qualities do not exist.) | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm not a philosopher, but maybe I can help. I'm not sure about Descartes, but with regards to Kant, could you be talking about his Transcendental Idealism (see Critique of Pure Reason) with the Secondary Quality Analogy? I found this article, maybe it will be of use: _URL_0_ \n\nHope this helps!\n-Nibblelard"
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} | train_eli5 | Second Quality Idealism (Epistemology, Philosophy)
After Galileo Galilei distinguished between objective primary qualities (extension, solidity, arguably motion) and subjective secondary qualities (color, taste, smell, sound...), some thinkers (Descartes, Kant?) found the approach of "second quality idealism". What does this term mean? (I found out that it is not the same as Berkeley's idea of "subjective idealism", i.e. that everything is subjective and primary qualities do not exist.) | [
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1zwfj4 | How do you just lose a Boeing 777? | I can't help but wonder how, with modern technology including satellite and radar, we've been unable to track down the ridiculously large plane that disappeared on its Malaysia-Beijing route two days ago.
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"Satellites and radar are notoriously poor at seeing under the surface of the ocean. Which is where that jet undoubtably is, unless a James Bond villain has it in his secret volcano lair. \n \nPlus there's a pretty large area to cover. There are special radars that can be deployed by ship (and sonar), but they still have to pass near the correct location to have a chance to spot anything.",
"It stopped transmitting. We know where it was the last time it transmitted and had radar contact but it moved after that. And it appears to have landed in the ocean. Airplanes are big but the ocean is much much bigger. \n\nRadar and satellites generally can't see underwater, and the kind of satellites and radar with that type of resolution don't have global coverage. \n\nThe last time something like this happened it took 2 years to find all the pieces despite knowing pretty well where the plane lost contact."
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} | train_eli5 | How do you just lose a Boeing 777?
I can't help but wonder how, with modern technology including satellite and radar, we've been unable to track down the ridiculously large plane that disappeared on its Malaysia-Beijing route two days ago. | [
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69p48f | In chess, why do players resign when it seems like there is alot more of the game to play? Why not play to the end in case the opponent makes a mistake? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Either you're in a situation (like king and rook vs king) where it would be an insult to imagine your opponent making the kind of mistake that would result in a draw, or you're in a situation where you can salvage a little bit of grace by recognizing an inescapable trap before it's completely obvious. It's saying, *I wasn't good enough to avoid it, but at least I'm good enough to recognize it when it happens.*\n\nYou don't resign like that unless you're sure: it's extra embarrassing to resign, and then have it pointed out that you could have escaped by doing this, this, and this.\n\nAnd, in a whole other category, sometimes you just want to stop playing chess, and don't care about winning or losing any more.",
"They resign because the chances of the really good players \"making a mistake\" is quite low under those circumstances. They both pretty much see the way to the end and don't need to play it out.",
"two reasons: No path to victory remains, or frustration. I see these all the time in pokemon battles.\n\nI use a Ditto with Imposter, which lets it transform immediately into a copy of their pokemon when sent out, rather than making me lose a turn. Since I have a choice scarf, I almost always go first. People often resign soon, as i start sweeping their team with their own pokemon.\n\nHowever, because of the Choice Scarf, my ditto will be locked into a single move. And sometimes, there's nothing I can do. I might get locked into Earthquake, and they have a Flying pokemon. After five turns I'd start damaging myself and the outcome is inevitable.\n\nAlmost. I have won using my Ditto like this. When the Struggle that I used that ends up taking me out, also takes them out. But that rarely ever happens. So aside from that 1/1,000 scenario, I just give up because I can't win.\n\nIts like that in Chess, but with less Dragons shooting meteors at each other.",
"In low level chess, both players will be making game-breaking mistakes left and right, many times a game. Neither player has the skill to reliably avoid their own mistakes, reliably recognize their opponent's mistakes, or reliably know how to capitalize on their opponent's mistakes. It's just chaos, and there's no reason not to play the game to the end because anything can happen. People miss one-move checkmates, people forget that their pieces are in danger and throw them away, etc. Strategy at this level is nonexistent, despite what the players may think they're doing. Resigning is rare, and basically limited to quitting out of frustration. \n\nIn mid-level chess, each player might make one or two serious mistakes in a game, and the first player that notices and accurately responds is an overwhelming favorite to win. You can probably claw your way back from losing a few pawns, but once someone is up by a major piece, it's usually not too difficult to just ride that advantage out to an inevitable victory. You can still play to the bitter end if you want to, and there's not a bad chance that you'll stage a comeback with some clever tactic, but once you get half-decent at chess, you start to be able to recognize when a position is hopeless and when it isn't. Strategy at this level is largely about maneuvering your opponent into positions where they're more likely to miss something. \n\nIn high-level chess, outright mistakes are extremely rare to nonexistent. Games are won and lost on subtle positioning advantages, not brilliantly calculated sequences of flashy exchanges. Since neither player is likely to ever make a mistake, strategy at this level condenses down to slowly constricting your opponent's options until they have no real way of doing anything meaningful, at which point they may as well resign, or offer a draw if you can't make headway either. \n\nThe best strategic advice anyone ever gave me was that if your plan hinges on hoping your opponent doesn't notice what you're trying to do, *that's a bad plan*. Always assume your opponent is at least as good as you are, and knows what you know. Otherwise what you're doing isn't strategy at all, just banking on luck.",
"It's become the etiquette. If you play on in a position where the other player would have to be a fool to lose, well you're basically calling the other player a fool.\n\nA secondary factor is that chess is mentally exhausting and tournaments and matches involve multiple games and are not a knock-out structure. Put all your effort into one game in hopes of a comeback and you could wear yourself out and hurt your chances in the next game. Resign, and you could do better in the next game and place higher overall.",
"A large part of it is respect for your opponent. In high level chess, chances of your opponent making a mistake is low. Even if he/she did make one, I doubt you'd be satisfied with the win. Resigning or proposing a draw is much more respectable and sporting."
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} | train_eli5 | In chess, why do players resign when it seems like there is alot more of the game to play? Why not play to the end in case the opponent makes a mistake?
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6u30ds | The difference between taking a good corner and a bad corner in Motorsport | I often hear a commentator say the driver did really well in that corner, or that the driver took the corner well. What does that mean and how do you do it. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Changing the direction of any moving object is always a difficult thing. So as a car approaches a corner it does so with quite a bit of speed and momentum. \n\nTires grip the road via friction, but there's a limited amount of force those tires are able to exert to keep the car moving in the direction it intends. The tendency of the car during a corner is to keep going the same direction it was going before the corner. The tires are able to exert a force on the car that causes it to change directions. \n\nIf you are going full speed and enter a corner without slowing down, the likely outcome is that the tires won't be enough force to change direction, and the car will spin out and go off the track. This would be a bad outcome.\n\nThe other outcome is that you over compensate and slow down too much for the turn. It should be obvious why, during a race, this would be bad.\n\nSo the trick is to use all the tire's grip and not let any go to waste. Use all of the force that the tires are able to exert. Take the corner at the maximum speed that you are able while still maintaining the grip of the tires so you don't go off track. \n\nThere are a few ways that this is done. The first is that there's a \"line\" for every corner where you are able to spread that turning force over a maximum distance thereby giving your tires more time to get you through. So if you take a very sharp corner you'd need to slow down more to maintain grip. There's a very specific technique for this, check out [Wikipedia racing Line](_URL_0_). The basics of it are simple, approach the corner from the outside edge of the track, nick the inside edge at the \"apex\" of the corner and head back to the outside edge of the track. It makes the corner less severe and you are able to maintain more speed through the corner. \n\nSo when they talk about a racer doing a corner well they are talking about 3 elements. First is the line, did the car make a perfect racing line of the corner. Second is entry speed, the car should always slow down for a corner, but not slow down too much or too early. So the driver needs to perfectly execute a last second breaking maneuver to slow to the exact \"corner entry speed\" they need to they can maintain grip. Lastly, as the driver pulls out of the corner they need to accelerate back to full speed. Do this too early and it'll fuck the grip on the tires, too late and you'll lose precious seconds of time. \n\nSo entry speed (breaking), exit speed (acceleration), and corner line. Hit all 3 perfectly and you'll be riding the limit of your tire's potential grip losing an absolute minimum of time in that corner.",
"The basics is that a good corner is one you get through quickest while maximizing speed for the straightaway or being prepared for the next turn. There's a line that will be most efficient for your particular car on that particular track in that particular weather. You need to know where to start (probably on the outside of the track), when to brake, how much braking you need to do to keep your tires from slipping, where the apex of your turn (where you are closest to the inside wall) should be, when to accelerate, and where your ending position should be to prepare for the next corner. All of this while considering where the other cars are as well. [Here's a good article about the basics of setting up a racing line](_URL_1_). To learn more about cornering, there's another article linked at the end for fast corners, but it's more complex."
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} | train_eli5 | The difference between taking a good corner and a bad corner in Motorsport
I often hear a commentator say the driver did really well in that corner, or that the driver took the corner well. What does that mean and how do you do it. | [
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6y39h8 | How and when did capital letters become associated with screaming and loudness? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty sure that's inherited from comic books. \nThe bigger the text, the louder the character is speaking.\n\n_URL_0_"
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393ypl | Why are remote lock controls so common in cars, but not on buildings? | You know, the little clicker that pops your trunk and locks your doors. How come we don't have that on houses? It would be a great quality of life thing when carrying in groceries or a sleeping child. I know there's no technological barrier to making it secure, so I dunno why we don't have them. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"well there are electronic locks now, some that can unlock by cell phone/wifi. some use bluetooth in close proximity.\n\nnot sure why its taken so long though..."
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} | train_eli5 | Why are remote lock controls so common in cars, but not on buildings?
You know, the little clicker that pops your trunk and locks your doors. How come we don't have that on houses? It would be a great quality of life thing when carrying in groceries or a sleeping child. I know there's no technological barrier to making it secure, so I dunno why we don't have them. | [
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3h4w02 | Why do voters have to register their party affiliation, and what does that mean? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IIRC: you only have to register your party affiliation if you want to vote in the primary. If you want to vote in the actual presidential election, you are not required to do this. \n \nThe primary itself wants only their own people to vote in the primary, so people from across the political aisle won't be involved in putting forth who they are front-running candidate is going to be. But ultimately, the primary doesn't have any sort of political office to run for, it's just sort of an election to see who should be in an election.",
"Depends on the country, but in the US (and then it depends on what state you're in), if you want to vote in primary elections (i.e. picking the candidate who will run on the party's ticket for the main election), you have to pick a party, since the primaries are tied to specific parties. If you have no interest in primary elections, you can register as unaffiliated if you want. \n\nFun fact: my grandpa, who is about as liberal as they come, registered as a Republican just so he could troll primary elections and fuck with my hippie aunt by prominently displaying the franked mail he got from George W. Bush.",
"In Canada we have this too.\n\nTwo people want to be the Conservative Member of Parliament for an area. Members of the party vote for who gets to be the representative. You need to pay to be part of that party and to vote.\n\nHowever, in the actual election you can vote for whoever you want."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do voters have to register their party affiliation, and what does that mean?
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4b8j1n | What are the actual jobs of high ranking people in the armed forces? Generals, majors, colonels, etc. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are managers. Money, manpower, etc. The higher the rank, the more you become a politician and the further you are away from the reality of \"boots on ground\" or \"bombs on target\", just like the civilian world.",
"Think about a trade/function you are familiar with. A company with 1,500 employees has unskilled workers, skilled workers, supervisors, managers, directors, vice presidents a president and maybe a CEO.\n\nAn unskilled worker does their job, supervised. A skilled worker may do their job with limited supervision. A supervisor controls the work process of several others although they may also perform the work. A manager supervises even more and may have budgetary responsibilities. A director relies on managers and supervisors to handle the day to day operations and focus's on strategic goals and department operations. A vice president's view is focused up and out, developing the resources to execute the companies 'vision'. The president establishes (through consultation with vice presidents, directors and people of influence hopefully) that vision. The CEO is ultimately responsible for the company's impact on the community and spends most of their time interacting with influences outside of the company.\n\nThis translates to the military although each branch is different. A soldier, sailor, airman or marine has a specific task to perform, no matter how menial it is. A specialist usually does a more complicated task although it is usually a single effort. When a task needs more than one person, someone is assigned to oversee the task (Corporal, Petty Officer etc). When several ongoing activities are grouped together, a command structure is put into place with mid to senior level enlisted and one or more junior to mid level officers. This would be a platoon, section, work center or such. \n\nWhen a group of functional executors are put together, a management team is created to handle the operations, training and budget of the group. This gets into the middle grade of officers (Majors, Lieutenant Colonels, Colonels, Lieutenant Commanders, Commanders, Captains) We are talking about units of 500-5,000 now.\n\nDuring their career, some officer's are selected for political positions and some from operational. This decision is based on the officer's management style and greatly impacts their career opportunities.\n\nOfficers are college graduates and just like a BA can follow on to get an MBA or other degrees a BS, MS, PHD, so do officers get the opportunity. So do enlisted. Training does not stop with the completion of Boot Camp, AIT, A School, C School etc. \n\nGenerals and Admirals manages multiple major commands that they are responsible to the public and government for the impact that their units have.\n\nI've gone on long enough. Does this help?",
"In peace time, they're basically managers and public speakers\n\nIn war time, the higher your rank is, the more information you need to assess and your decision becomes less tactical and more strategic\n\nPut simply, this is what would happen:\n\nGenerals: Enemy's tank batallion is approaching Washington, I want Washington secured and Miami recaptured from the enemy, we need to cut off their beach head\n\nColonel: Deploy batallion A6 and A7 for Washington, they're better prepared against the enemy's tanks. Batallion A8 for Miami, they don't have as much firepower there.\n\nMajor: Unit Warhog will secure the White House, Unit Riflebutt will secure the Smithsonian\n\nSomething like that",
"> Majors are typically assigned as specialized executive or operations officers for battalion-sized units of 300 to 1,200 soldiers.\n\n-\n\n > As the office of colonel became an established practice, the colonel became the senior captain in a group of companies that were all sworn to observe his personal authority — to be ruled or regimented by him. This regiment, or governance, was to some extent embodied in a contract and set of written rules, also referred to as the colonel's regiment or standing regulation(s). By extension, the group of companies subject to a colonel's regiment (in the foregoing sense) came to be referred to as his regiment (in the modern sense) as well.\n\n-\n\n > Historically the \"lieutenant\" was the deputy to a \"captain\", and as the rank structure of armies began to formalise, this came to mean that a captain commanded a company and had several lieutenants, each commanding a platoon. Where more junior officers were employed as deputies to the lieutenant, they went by many names, including second lieutenant, sub-lieutenant, ensign and cornet. \n\nIt just means varying level of responsibility, nothing interesting.",
"My mom is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, and she's an occupational therapist. She does more administrative work than hands on patient care now though.",
"You oversee higher and higher levels.\n\nLt. Colonels are usually Batallion commanders.\n\nColonels are Brigade commanders (multiple battalions).\n\nA General would oversee a division (multiple brigades)."
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} | train_eli5 | What are the actual jobs of high ranking people in the armed forces? Generals, majors, colonels, etc.
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5jjyil | Why do many doctors work in crazy 24-36 hours shifts? | Shouldn't they be more prone to make a mistake because they're tired? Isn't that dangerous? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The most common answer that was given to me during my training was that working an extended shift allows one to see and understand the evolution of an acute disease process through the patient's initial presentation and progression through therapy. The more of that illness you are physically present for and participating in, the greater the learning and reinforcement in your mind.\n\nI was never really satisfied with that answer, and it's partially BS - some of it has some credence. But in reality, the real answers are multifactorial. I'll list some of the reasons here.\n\n- Medicine has a very strong sense of tradition. It is a hierarchical structure and is deeply committed to the preservation of standards. I found it to be very much like the military. The \"father\" of the American medical training system, [William Stewart Halsted](_URL_0_) was known to work exhaustively and expect the same of his trainees - men like Cushing and Dandy. Later on, brilliant surgeons such as Michael Debakey continued to promote the necessity of 100% devotion to the patient in the form of grueling work hours and little to no time off. There are countless war stories of these men and their often brutal treatment of their trainees. I remember one apocryphal story about Debakey taking the new interns to the main hospital lobby doors and telling them they wouldn't go through those doors for the next year.\n\n- There is also an ingrained culture of \"I trained this way, and you must also in order to be a competent physician\". If I had a dollar for every time during training that I was told the ACGME work hour restrictions were creating terrible doctors, I'd be able to pay of my student loans before the next millenium. Since the dawn of time, old crusty docs have been bemoaning how easy the residents of today have it.\n\n- Nobody becomes a physician without at least some sense of altruism, even the most craven among us. When there are sick patients to be seen, it's really hard to mentally justify \"going home to go to sleep\" when someone or some family is having the worst day of their life. It sounds trite, but when someone is sick and needs my help, I have a really hard time assigning a higher priority to my own rest. (That's probably partially my Catholic guilt). Human misery is endless and does not rest.\n\n- Medicine is not a 9-5 job. People will always get sick at odd hours, and someone will always need to be available to do an emergent thoracotomy at 2am. You can't work shifts as a trauma surgeon. There just aren't enough of them, and I doubt there ever will be. The training is too long and arduous to ever expect to get to a supply of trauma docs (or Ob-Gyns, or Pediatricians) where every little hospital in the US has enough of them to staff rotating shifts like nurses.\n\n- There is an enormous amount of work to be done in today's hospital, and so much of it is clerical. Services need to be covered with residents, call schedules, back up call schedules, vacations, clinic hours, etc. Those 24 or more hour shifts allow residents to have some precious days off once in a while. \n\n-Finally, and I know may people will howl at this point, but I do feel working 28 hour shifts made me a better doctor. I know it did. Specifically, it taught me to think on my feet, prioritize, and overcome (to a degree) fatigue. I am not claiming I am immune to fatigue or that I am as effective after hour 26 as I am after hour 4. The ACGME and many others like to make a big deal about work hour restrictions during residency, but what never gets talked about is that for many of us docs, life after residency can be even harder. And there are ZERO restrictions on the hours attendings work. In my past job (which I quit) after working all day in the office and rounding in the hospital, I was expected to take phone calls for ED admissions and for moronic patient questions all night long, every 4th night. I did that for 5 years.\n\nEDIT: Thank you all so much for the gold!",
"I was talking to my mother who is a surgeon in the NHS about this a couple of days ago and it boils down to this.\n\n\nNo, doctors don't want to do these insane hours they'd rather go home to their families especially this time of year. But these days doctors are expected to see at least double the amount of patients than they should because of budget cuts. Combined with a policy to never be able to willingly turn down a patient since it could be months before they could come in again, doctors end up working these insane hours. They know it is unsafe but they have only two other options:\n\n1. They just go home, leaving the patient in the hands of whoever is on shift next which at best causes them to wait several hours for what may amount to 20 minutes of consultation and at worst may cause the patient to be misdiagnosed due to poor communication which can be fatal.\n\n\n2. They go work in the private sector. This is something that here in the UK most experienced doctors are woo-ed by the private sector constantly. In the private sector you get to work half the hours (only 8-10) for over double the pay. The only downside is that you're going to be leaving the NHS which will only struggle more and more as government officials critisize it for not being perfect, slash its budget, then critsize it again until the public is in favor to turn the whole thing into an insurance based system. Which would leave millions unable to pay for healthcare. When I ask around most doctors are unable to make that moral compromise.",
"Most medical errors are made during the transition of care. So if a doctor works an 8 or even 12 hour shift, the care of a patient may shift 2 or 3 times in 24 hours. Miscommunication and not having a clear, full picture of whats happening with a patient are what lead to mistakes. The idea is that a person who may be a little tired, but knows everything about a patient is less likely to make a mistake than a fully rested doctor who gets all his info second hand.",
"It is dangerous. We do it because they make us, resident physicians, do it. \n\nInstead of focusing on patient safety by researching better handoff procedures, they just look for excuses for why they were right to make us work these long shifts in the first place. \n\nWant proof? Find me a physician who has completed residency who would voluntarily ever work a 36 hour shift again. I've certainly never met one. \n\nThese kinds of work hours are unacceptable for pilots and truck drivers, but for some reason it's perfectly fine for a physician. There are only relatively few specialities which need 24-36 hour shifts for training purposes, like trauma surgery. In internal medicine, I don't think I contributes to learning whatsoever. \n\nAll these 24-36 hour shifts do is drive some of the smartest people away from primary care because they don't want to deal with being miserably tired and endangering patient safety.",
"It comes down to the continuity of care. My wife is an OB/GYN. When she's on Labor and Delivery, patients could easily be in labor for 20 hours. If she arrived at hour 10 and left at hour 18, that means she picked the case up from another doctor, and handed it off to a third. Having one doctor present for all or at least the majority of a case is important. When she leaves a case in the middle, it's not uncommon for her to have to continue dealing with it via text/phone/email after she's gone, so she may as well still be there.\n\nAdditionally, student doctors can only learn while they're there. Every case doesn't come in from 9-5, and sometimes surgeries can run a really long time. If you were to cut work shifts down to 8 hours you'd have to keep them in Residency for far longer to make up the simple amount of \"hours in training\" they need to be exposed to enough cases to learn how to handle them on their own. They're called \"resident physicians\" for a reason-- they used to *live* at the hospital. \n\nOne other thing that sticks out, is that Intern (first year of residency) hours were strictly limited to 16 hours the year after my wife finished her intern year, when the limit was 30 hours. What this meant for the new interns, was that they no longer had what were called \"golden weekends\" once or twice a month. (A weekend where you get both Friday and Saturday off. The rest of us just call that a \"weekend\".) Because they were limited to 16 hour call shifts, they wound up working at least one shift every single Saturday or Sunday, so while you may be less tired for each shift, new residents never get a chance to actually be away from work to refresh and relax.\n\nAlso keep in mind that it's not like being forced to sit in a cubicle for 30 hours straight. They have call rooms where they can take naps (not that they always get the opportunity), and you're also a part of a team. No one is working alone for 30 hours straight.",
"Continuity of care turns out to be quite important.\n\nDisclaimer: I'm an ER doc, and I do shift-work, usually 12's. 24-hour shifts in my field would kill you at a young age. At the pace we work, 12 hours is a LONG shift; I'm usually completely spent by the end.\n\nBut I stay longer, because I don't like to sign out patients to the next doc. Other posters have already pointed it out, but even without the studies, I could have told you: sign-out is a very dangerous time. You're far better off with the Doc who initially saw the patient (when they're the sickest), resuscitated them, re-assessed them, and has followed them through their ER course. THAT is the guy who needs to wrap them up in a nice little package, and hand them off to the hospitalist, or private doc. \n\nAdding another hand-off in that mix is NOT a good idea. Interestingly, my employer (an ER staffing company) doesn't want us to stay late... they want us to sign out those patients to the next doc, so they don't have to pay you that extra hour. Screw that... I stay late, off-the-clock, to clean up my own patients, ESPECIALLY if they're \"sick\" (that word has a much different meaning in ER-doc-speak). There's no way that next doc can experience what I experienced, see what I saw, or have the same sense of the patient. \n\nThe same thing happens in other specialties/settings as well. Too many cooks spoils the broth, and increases the risk to the patient.",
"In the USA, there's a really simple reason for this. The vast majority of the people who work 24-36 hour shifts are residents, who are doctors but still receiving training. They have basically no bargaining power because they need to complete their residency to become board certified in whatever they want to do. Residency programs have limited slots and can be very competitive to get one of those slots. \n\nBasically, they're forced to.",
"Great Question\n\n1) It is dangerous. No one learns after 18 straight hours. \n\n2) Indentured servitude is one of the few pillars keeping this bloated mammoth of US healthcare afloat. If residents weren't making McDonalds Salaries Hospitals would be in worse (if possible) shape.\n\n3) Evidence shows handoffs (transitions of care) is messy so thats a legit reason. \n\nACGME (peeps who run shit) recently conducted the iCOMPARE trial and will be changing the resident work limit from 16-hours to 24+ based on the fact that mortality didn't really change. Long story short, a resident is gonna fall asleep at the wheel, crash and die. CNN will lose its shit. It will change back and forth until doctors start advocating for themselves in the political arena which wont happen because they are too busy working 24-36 hour shifts.",
"You would think that a tired doctor is more dangerous, but a growing body of literature (cited at the bottom) indicates that patient handoffs are a bigger indicator of negative outcomes. That is to say, doctors and nurses internalize and keep track of a lot of relevant information during the course of treating a patient -- and not all of it can be perfectly transferred over to the new shift. \n\nWhile there is a lot of work (cited) being done to procedurally improve the handoff process, including a more standard forms and help from computerized systems. That said, these improvements only lower the risk of important information being lost, they don't eliminate it. \n\nTLDR: Being tired is bad and associated with making mistakes due to fatigue. Transferring patients from tired doctor to fresh doctor also associated with making mistakes due to important information lost during handoff.\n\nCitations:\n\n[1] _URL_4_\n\n[2] _URL_4_\n\n[3] _URL_4_\n\n[4] _URL_4_",
"Cardiac surgeon here. In my field it is primarily because there just aren't enough warm bodies with our (my) training to do all the work that is required. NPs and PAs can only do so much. Transplants happen at night, elective cases happen during the day, emergencies happen at any time. You catch sleep when you can, but, when you are on call/post-call, you are either in the OR, in clinic, taking care of ICU patients, or dealing with clerical stuff. The work literally never ends. It is not uncommon for me to be in the hospital for 60-72hrs straight. 24hr shifts are a blessing. Do I think it's the best way to function? Definitely not. But until you can convince people to go through 8 years of schooling, 7-10yrs of grueling post-graduate training, all while accumulating interest on massive debt and making the equivalent of minimum wage...nothing will change. Regardless of what the federal government says about work hour regulation. Physicians (for the most part) aren't just going to walk away from a dying patient.",
"The admin answer is that you get better care from one overworked doctor that sees you from start to finish than you do from 2-3 fresh and energized doctors.\n\nMy personal belief is more so the, where would you find more doctors? In the US, it is pretty expensive and massively time consuming to produce one doctor. Then you look at how many schools there are in the US, I think the number is like 130, but lets use 150 to be conservative. Each of those schools graduates a small class, about 150 students. That is 22,500 new doctors produced each year (not full fledged mind you, but lets put that aside). 22,500 doctors to be spread around the entire country, and not all of them doing everything, but spread into different specialities. (We can also add in a bit more from international students who decide to do their residency/work in the US, but that number will be considerably smaller.)\n\nYou can start to see that not a whole lot of providers are being \"made\" yet most people realize that the demand for services is going up. The options are then to pump out more doctors, either by creating new schools or subsidizing studies allowing more people who otherwise couldnt afford to attend to do so (super expensive) or dropping the standards and increasing current class sizes (nobody wants that), or pushing the current doctors to work some crazy hours. In the US, option 2 is what is more used.\n\nThe good thing is that most doctors try to be good sports about it. For example, I worked at a hospital where most doctors came in even if they were pretty sick. Thats taboo as far as the people in the offices are concerned, but when you ask the doctors why they didnt use a sick day, most would tell you that if they called out sick, their peers would just have to somehow take on all of their patient load...on top of their own.\n\nEDIT: I will make mention that the admins arent just talking entirely out of their a**, there is legitimate research to back this up. I merely believe that the MAJOR reason for the long hours is not the popularly stated one.",
"Is this a non-US thing? Most doctors I know don't tend to work those shifts except during residency. \n\nNow, they do take 24-48 hours of being \"on call,\" but that is a little different because, for those in private practice, that means you only get called in in emergencies and to make hospital rounds twice a day.",
"I'm an internal medicine resident in Canada. \n\nThe maximum we work is generally 26 hours but I have had some days as long as 30 hours (which go against our residency contract, but anyway...) We are not necessarily awake the whole time, I would say I am usually able to get at least a short 30min nap, but I have had many many sleepless nights and days. Some services may do weekend call where they are on call for 72 hours straight but not in hospital. That being said, all you need are a couple bad cases or unfortunate things to happen and you could be working nearly straight all weekend. \n\nOne of the variables most closely associated with errors is patient hand over, so partly one reason why we work these hours is to reduce the number of times a patients care is handed over. I imagine it like a game of telephone where a phrase is whispered around the circle and by the end of it sounds totally different.\n\nPersonally I have not noted making any catastrophic mistakes towards the end of a shift but I do not do procedures as a rule overnight or at end of a call shift unless absolutely necessary. I know I have definitely forgotten information when handing over to the next physician in the morning though just from sheer exhaustion. Also, I know residents who have been in accidents when driving home from the hospital after being awake for 30+ hours. \n\nIn terms of \"why not increase the number of residents/medical students\" question - it's slightly different in Canada due to our healthcare system. Our resident salary is government funded and so the government determines how many residency spots they are willing to fund each year. This is in turn determined by things like patient loads and safety, job prospects (eg. neurosurgery jobs are tough to come by so there are fewer residents each year). So it's not as simple as just opening up more spots, because ultimately the money has to come from somewhere AND this person needs a job at the end of all of this 13 years of post secondary education.",
"My question is why is there such awful inter-communication at hospitals? I've been stuck in hospitals for a year with my mom, and there always seems to just be a constant communication problem. Between doctors and nurses, nurses and patients, patients and doctors, doctors and doctors... It's like, no one knows what the other is doing.",
"For any doctors reading this, I'd just like to say how much I appreciate the grueling work and selfless long hours you put in. It's inspirational, and you truly are heroes.\n\n\nThank you, and Merry Christmas.",
"Im not a doctor, but an EMT who works 24 hour shifts. I don't want to work these hours, more because of the added danger of driving tired. When it comes to patient care, it seems like adrenaline takes over and our ability to do well is maintained. All in all, this is terrible for my body, but, like I said, I'm sure there are different challenges between a doctor and an EMT in respect to the length of a shift.",
"Because it's cheaper that way. A Doctor is almost always an \"exempt\" employee. That means if a Doctor works over 40 hours they don't get paid extra, if they work under 40 hours the Hospital can dock their pay. By doing these insane shifts they easily get waaay over 40 hours, some even hit 80 hours. That means the hospital basically has 2 doctors for the price of one.\n\nThis \"it makes them better\" or \"they see the progression of\" excuse is nonsense. It makes for worse Doctors overall. For some reason people think it's fine for a Doctor to kill someone in the 20th hour of their shift but its a problem for a truck driver.\n\n[Study](_URL_5_) after [study](_URL_7_) after [study](_URL_6_) after [study](_URL_8_) has shown that working past about 8 hours kills your performance, ability to learn, and dramatically increases errors. The problem is that people think they do better than what they really so they assume this idiotic idea of super long shifts is beneficial and the problem persists.",
"As an attorney with a focus on medical malpractice, it's been a boon. Of course it's ridiculous, the logic is basically \"this is what we do because this is how we do it\". Other countries don't have this system and their medical care is fine. The US isn't special, just stubborn, hide-bound, and for me, lucrative. Some of my cases are like shooting fish in a barrel. The system won't change until it becomes too expensive to continue the same stupid set up we have. I'm working on that.",
"People writing comments here should say which country they're referring to, practices and laws differ.",
"I remember reading a study out of Canada relatively recently that they compared 12 hr shifts VS 24 hr shifts. The study concluded that the patients under the care of the doctors with the longer shifts had better outcomes. They attributed this to \"less handoffs\" between the doctors. They said that even though the shifts are longer, these doctors knew these patients better and instead of more doctors seeing the same patient, it was the same doctor for longer therefore knew the patient better which led to better outcomes. \n\nI guess you can kind of think of it as the game \"telephone\". You get a report on a patient that came through 8 doctors vs 4, you might get a clearer picture with just the 4, you know?",
"Anecdotally I used to clean OR's between cases and there was a Dr. Kreiger(spelling?) That would literally bust hip replacements for 16-24 hours straight like back to back next case is already prepped by the time he finished the one he was on, took 30 minutes at some point to jam food In his mouth and kept going. As result of what we coined Kreiger-thons he only worked like Monday and Tuesday went home and slept for a day straight and had the rest of the week to himself. Great track record of successful cases as well.",
"From what I've seen (my dad and a few doctor cousins)\n\n1. There are not enough doctors\n\n2. They should let more people be doctors. I would rather be treated by a doctor who got a B+ in school than an A+ student who's been awake for the last 72 hours.",
"There's a lot of rationalization going on, so I'll just toss out a more general perspective to see where it lands. \n\nIt seems to me that people will always end up being overworked when society decides that everyone has a right to the service they provide. \n\nWhen people have a right to electricity (in many areas, AC in the summer is legally considered a necessity for health/safety reasons), not only is it illegal to deny them electricity even when they don't pay for it, but it means there's regulations for response times and repairs whenever there's an outage - because not doing so would deny people their \"right\" to electricity. \n\nAs a result, those instances require a huge increase in labor and costs - and the company responsible has no choice in the matter; they simply must deal with the extended hours and get it done. In this case, the workload is temporarily massively increased, but it's not considered an issue because it's only a temporary increase. There's not normally a need for a huge team that would be capable of dealing with the outage in reasonable shift lengths, because they'd have nothing to do for the majority of the time. So, a smaller group of people just temporarily deal with the occasional periods of being overworked, and the private company just has to plan for the additional costs of overtime and repairs cost it takes to ensure people have their \"right\" to electricity maintained. Nobody minds this because the issue is health/safety, the cost is absorbed by the company, and the company makes their own profit. \n\nAlso, consider firemen or any other disaster relief/response profession. They also don't actually perform their service the majority of the time, since there's not always a fire or disaster happening. In this case, a reasonably sized team is employed full time on salary regardless of whether or not they are actively performing their service, but the cost to the public, and nobody minds since the issue is health/safety and their service is entirely a public service. \n\nNow consider health care from this perspective. Like electricity and disaster relief/fire response, people have a right to medical care - but unlike those other two, people *always* need medical care, and in many cases each individual case has to be treated with the same urgency as a disaster like a fire or electrical outage. This means medical professionals have a near constant obligation to perform their service. \n\nThe fact that it's a right and a (mostly) constant need, but not considered a public service and is provided by individuals and companies (hospitals) makes it more unique. The fact that other private companies (health insurance companies) absorb most of the cost also complicates the situation. \n\nTL;DR: Doctors are overworked because although they aren't a publicly funded public service, the service they provide is in constant demand and is considered a right, while the cost and requirements of becoming a doctor are so high that the economic result of supply and demand is that they are highly paid and overworked.",
"The current literature shows that the patient care is most negatively effected by physician \"hand offs\". This is the number of times the doctor taking care of you has to give report (all the info about you) to another doctor to take care of you. So longer call shifts = less \"hand offs\" = less errors. However, there are large efforts emphasizing improving the quality of these \"hand offs\" to reduce these errors.\n\nThe literature shows NO objective difference (based on many multiple patient care quality metrics) in patient care whether you've worked 1 hour or 30. However, subjective resident (student doctor) tiredness is increased (based on resident survey).\n\nA few years back they put duty hours restrictions on residents (80/wk avg in the month) to combat this fatigue and potential errors. But since there is zero evidence that these have actually decreased errors, the pendulum has shifted the other way and they intend to amend these restrictions to allow more hours. Most programs find way around duty hours anyway.",
"I am a medical resident. The problem is that many of us don't do shift-work, and we have a larger responsibility to patients than other medicine careers (i.e. nurses, pharmacists). In the end, we are responsible. Hence, we go home when the work is done. When 5 extra patients roll in at 4:30pm, we as residents stay until they are seen, and hand-off a few to the night staff. Hence we finish seeing them at 6:30pm. Then one of them gets sick, so we have to stay to fix them because we know the patients well, so we leave at 9pm. \n\nWhen we become fully trained in dependent physicians, we often have to stay late and take on more shifts because hiring more staff will cut everyones salary. The most greedy doctors are the most senior ones (ones who no longer have to care for kids or are divorced), and they will never cut their salary in the interests of some junior doctor trying to go home to his wife at 9pm. \n\nWe don't choose to work these crazy hours. Does it cause medical errors? ABSOLUTELY The solution is to hire more staff, and limit working hours (i.e. add more shifts). However, studies demonstrate handing over many times also causes medical error, and costs system more money. Hence we are stuck working crazy hours.",
"Mostly this is during residency. After that, outside of surgical specialities, we really don't put in hours that way. Being on call for that long in the ICU is helpful to see how changes you've made affect the patient. To my NSGY colleagues - not sure how you are still genius without sleep, but thank you for making that MRI happen magically within record time.",
"Lots of naive answers. It's about the money -- specifically residents who are paid by the government earning sub minimum wage hourly rates. Wouldn't you want to get the most out of that if you were the hospital management?",
"It's thought that managing a patient for a 24 hour period teaches residents to deal with the disease & its management. As an example, when we had a patent of pneumonia & we dealt with its presentation, its complications & management of its complications. \n24 hour duty is also thought to get doctors used to dealing with patients at any time of day, even when the Dr is tired. \nIn some cases, there are so few doctors working at a hospital, there are not enough doctors to work shifts.\n\nHowever, these long duties do take their toll. I have worked long hectic calls for 6 years & due to sleep deprivation, stress & poor working conditions, I now suffer from depression.",
"Don't know about the US but in the UK we certainly don't work 24hr/36hr shifts as a routine. Shifts are generally up to 13hours as a maximum here. Some of the juniors will do a 24 hour shift but the overnight part of that will normally be non-resident (IE go home and wait for calls for advice, only come in if you have to). This tends to happen only really in specialities were the doctor is not likely to be called in.\nConsultants are slightly different, there will always be a consultant on call during the night as the last line of responsibility and so they will often do a 24 hour shift in that respect, but outside surgery it would not be common for them to have to come in.",
"The main reason is the high bar of entry to become a doctor. It's obscene what it takes to become a doctor. So, consequently, we don't have enough doctors. Some people argue that it's necessary to make sure we have good doctors, but I would argue that it's illegal in the USA to drive a truck more than 8 hours a day without sleeping. Why on earth is it perfectly fine to do brain surgery when you haven't slept in 30 hours? I think we would be safer with a little less training and doctors who have had a good night's sleep.\n\nHere's a side by side comparison of becoming a doctor here with another developed nation.\n\nUSA:\n\n4 years of college/university with pre-med courses\n\n4 years of medical school\n\n3-7 years of medical residency where you get paid less than minimum wage. \n\n1-3 years of fellowship (optional)\n\nTotal education cost when done: ~$100k\n\n\nGermany:\n\n5 years of medical school/hands on training to become a GP (you go straight from high school (gymnasium))\n\n2-5 specialization if you want to be a specialist. \n\nTotal education cost when done: completely free",
"Speaking as a professional pilot, the aviation industry has been managing this risk and aware of the negative effects for a long, long time. \n\nThe short version is, on average, a person after 17 hours of uninterrupted wakefulness has the performance level of a rested person with 0.05% Blood Alcohol Content.\n\nAt 24 hours, that person has the performance level of someone with 0.10% BAC (over legal impaired in every jurisdiction I can think of)\n\n(source: many, [but here's a link to a Transport Canada presentation](_URL_9_) )\n\nFatigue is further impacted by circadian rhythm issues/odd hours/stress/etc... and is cumulative. Working 36 hours and grabbing 6 hours sleep does not equal rested.\n\nNow, maybe the health care system manages to trap errors caused by this through staggered shifts to ensure someone is always rested, something not easily done in aviation, but the human body is the same regardless of profession and at 24 hours awake, you are \"legally\" over the impaired limit. Something to think about.",
"Talked to several swiss doctors about this and they basically told me they have to do this cause they're understaffed.\n\nThey also told me that doctors are in a occupation group where it's very likely to abuse drugs. Mostly amphetamines and opiates.\n\nYou have to see theres a difference in between an average drug user and a doc taking drugs. Doctors will most likely have 100% pure stuff and they also exactly know about the effects of it, so they can stay in a good dosage to take maximal advantage with the least disadvantages.\n\nAnd to be honest, I'd also prefer a concentrated doc on amphetamines over a doc which is totally exhausted, tired and unconcentrated.",
"This will probably get buried but one thing I've noticed in this thread is that the people outside of medicine think that most doctors work shifts. In reality only a few specialties have schedules that are truly shifts--anesthesia and emergency medicine might be examples. Other specialists leave when the work is done. There isn't a \"shift.\" Fatigue can be a concern but I also wouldn't want my surgeon to \"punch out\" in the middle of an operation just because his shift was over. I think patients benefit from doctors not having a shift mentality.",
"1. The primary reason of course is to see the patient from start to finish so there is less hand off and therefore potential errors due to poor communication or documentation.\n\n2. Hey residency is short! Do you really want a doctor treating you that only worked 9-5 40hrs a week during his/her residency?\n\n3. They (being admin) get more work out of us for same pay because we are salary( that's me being cynical). First years have a max of 16hrs. All bets are off for the rest of us. Basically it all boils down to money.\n\n4. My attending: I worked 72 hour shifts when I was your age. Suck it up you lazy shithead (actually said to me). So it's always been done this way and I suffered though it now it is your turn.\n\n5. If teaching involved than there is the opportunity to see it, do it, teach it.",
"Not a doctor, but married to a nurse. I asked her once why they run 12 hr shifts and she explained it was because there is less chance of mistakes being made in information exchange when you have 2 personnel change outs per patient per day vs. 3. Also patient care is better when fewer people are caring for a patient=more personalized and knowledgeable care.",
"if i learned anything from scrubs, ER, and greys anatomy....they get time off to sleep in other rooms which lead to sexy time.",
"The most common answer that was given to me during my training was that working an extended shift allows one to see and understand the evolution of an acute disease process through the patient's initial presentation and progression through therapy. The more of that illness you are physically present for and participating in, the greater the learning and reinforcement in your mind.\n\nI was never really satisfied with that answer, and it's partially BS - some of it has some credence. But in reality, the real answers are multifactorial. I'll list some of the reasons here.\n\n- Medicine has a very strong sense of tradition. It is a hierarchical structure and is deeply committed to the preservation of standards. I found it to be very much like the military. The \"father\" of the American medical training system, [William Stewart Halsted](_URL_10_) was known to work exhaustively and expect the same of his trainees - men like Cushing and Dandy. Later on, brilliant surgeons such as Michael Debakey continued to promote the necessity of 100% devotion to the patient in the form of grueling work hours and little to no time off. There are countless war stories of these men and their often brutal treatment of their trainees. I remember one apocryphal story about Debakey taking the new interns to the main hospital lobby doors and telling them they wouldn't go through those doors for the next year.\n\n- There is also an ingrained culture of \"I trained this way, and you must also in order to be a competent physician\". If I had a dollar for every time during training that I was told the ACGME work hour restrictions were creating terrible doctors, I'd be able to pay of my student loans before the next millenium. Since the dawn of time, old crusty docs have been bemoaning how easy the residents of today have it.\n\n- Nobody becomes a physician without at least some sense of altruism, even the most craven among us. When there are sick patients to be seen, it's really hard to mentally justify \"going home to go to sleep\" when someone or some family is having the worst day of their life. It sounds trite, but when someone is sick and needs my help, I have a really hard time assigning a higher priority to my own rest. (That's probably partially my Catholic guilt). Human misery is endless and does not rest.\n\n- Medicine is not a 9-5 job. People will always get sick at odd hours, and someone will always need to be available to do an emergent thoracotomy at 2am. You can't work shifts as a trauma surgeon. There just aren't enough of them, and I doubt there ever will be. The training is too long and arduous to ever expect to get to a supply of trauma docs (or Ob-Gyns, or Pediatricians) where every little hospital in the US has enough of them to staff rotating shifts like nurses.\n\n- There is an enormous amount of work to be done in today's hospital, and so much of it is clerical. Services need to be covered with residents, call schedules, back up call schedules, vacations, clinic hours, etc. Those 24 or more hour shifts allow residents to have some precious days off once in a while. \n\n-Finally, and I know may people will howl at this point, but I do feel working 28 hour shifts made me a better doctor. I know it did. Specifically, it taught me to think on my feet, prioritize, and overcome (to a degree) fatigue. I am not claiming I am immune to fatigue or that I am as effective after hour 26 as I am after hour 4. The ACGME and many others like to make a big deal about work hour restrictions during residency, but what never gets talked about is that for many of us docs, life after residency can be even harder. And there are ZERO restrictions on the hours attendings work. In my past job (which I quit) after working all day in the office and rounding in the hospital, I was expected to take phone calls for ED admissions and for moronic patient questions all night long, every 4th night. I did that for 5 years.",
"It's the residents that are working those hours. Full-fledged attending physicians rarely do.\n\nThe reason it continues is because the hospitals and government want the cheapest possible option. \n\nResidents are physicians. They cannot practice independently without completing residency. They cannot transfer or change residencies they are unsatisfied with without unnecessary headaches and the high risk of being ousted from medicine completely. Therefore, they are stuck at that hospital until they complete residency.\n\nThe hospitals know this and will therefore use the residents to do not only the work of a physician after hours, thus providing expert medical care at bargain-basement prices, but also clerical and nursing staff (blood draws, EKG acquisition, wheeling patients to Xray, calling pharmacies, setting up appointments with specialists, etc). Residents are paid about the same as an entry-level nurse, but work insane hours. Were the hospital to utilize independent physicians in these late hours, their costs would possibly go up by ten times or more (40k resident vs 400k physician with after hours bonuses). The hospitals would also have to hire more ancillary staff, costing even more.\n\nThe educational and patient-safety, \"handoffs-are-dangerous\", rhetoric is asinine and unconvincing. This is a purely financial issue.",
"I have no answer but oddly enough I am at a hospital today. My boyfriend is getting surgery. I went to get a coffee and the doctor before me ordered what I thought was an iced coffee. I was like \"oh you have iced coffee? I will get one of those.\" The barista followed up with \"That's six shots of espresso on ice\"\n\nSix?!?!\n\nMy hands would be shaking so badly I couldn't work. Then it sunk in why he needed those six shots of espresso.",
"I am a final year med student. I will be honest. Medicine is tough. And a lot of things to remember. Working with patients is the only thing that makes it remotely possible to memorize all those things, especially for young doctors. So simply, at the moment. It's either all in or out. And when you work long hours you are all in. And life only comes second.",
"None of these are ELI5.\n\nELI5: When you spend long periods of time working with somebody, you get to know them better. When you spend long periods of time with a patient, you also get to know them better. You see how they're feeling and are able to understand this, having full knowledge of the symptoms and more of an ability to properly diagnose or treat",
"As a student, in europe I can tell you that the hospital is pretty much devided into two separate places, appointed practice (from 8 am to 3/4 pm) where you do your work and see your appointed patients/surgeries. And then there are the emergencies, where people come for something to be sorted out ASAP. You can already see that there needs to be balance between emergency and standard practice. There are only so many doctors in a single hospital, so to cover all the needs, we do once or twice a week long turns of extra 8 hours or sometimes extra 12 hours. This way we cover all the appointed patients, and by rotating with other peers we manage to cover the ER",
"Continuity of care. Every time a case is handed to a new doctor there is a chance for error. That's the big push, but I feel it's also a money thing, insurance companies pay set amounts, that doesn't leave room for paying more doctors or someone has to make less money to pay them.",
"Evidence suggests the most errors resulting in bad outcomes for patients occurs during handover. Reducing the number of handovers by making doctors work longer hours, despite the fatigue, reduces errors.\n\nAlso, tradition. In residency they tell residents, \"well in my day we worked...\" So new doctors are inculcated with a bad culture.",
"Because the iCompare trial showed no provable mortality benefit in shorter shifts. They're about to up residency hours.",
"Here's a good video on the topic by a US doctor: _URL_11_",
"This will get buried, but the real answer is that young doctors only get a few years for med school, internship, and residency. You want your doctor to have 10,000+ hours of experience by the time they finish their residency, so you need to cram around 3000 hours of work in per year rather than 2000.",
"Doctor who's worked 24, 36 ( Ireland )and 12 hours shifts ( Oz )\n\nI disagree that there are any great merits working more than 12-18 hour shifts. All you get is more fatigued. People fall sick at any time of the day, so just staying longer at work for the excuse of 'learning more' is absolutely rubbish.\n\nThe only thing I learned from it is that fatigue can be a killer and I became paranoid approaching my 20th hour and 20 something patient that I may have made a small but fatal error somewhere. \n\nThere is a conflict that the government preys upon. If doctors don't stay and work long hours, we are evil and don't care about patients since we are paid well like they fell you we are ( a say 3rd doctor in Ireland earns about 2.2-3k a month after all the long shifts on top of their regular 8-5 hours after tax ) \nSo since they dont want to hire more people, they put it the onus on doctors to work longer hours, tying disagreements to safety and patient care being compromised when it's the unsafe hours causing them in the first place.\n\nPerhaps the comparison would be with a pilot, they carry 300 ppls lives per flight. I guess a tired doctor can only kill 20 or so per overnight shift. The medical community can only lobby that much, patients have to demand safe hours if they want safe doctors",
"It's mostly interns and residents that work those hours, although I'm sure in some specialties it's not unusual for attendings. People have outlined all the usual reasons: continuity of care, tradition, not enough warm bodies. \n\nHOWEVER: I'm convinced some of it is \"toughen up\" training. It's like a series of escalating dares. First you do your first 80 hr week (made of 12-16 hr days). Then, your first 30 hr shift. Then, your next 30 hr shift, you get no sleep, eat one meal and drink one bottle of water. Then, next time, you do all the above, and a patient dies and the family blames you. Then, next time, you do all the above, but this time you are 7 months pregnant and have a cold (and on and on). Point is, next time you just have a 12 hour day it feels like a day at the beach.",
"I'm sure a lot of this is true - also according to my mom (cardiovascular nurse) and my brother (ent surgeon) sometimes they will have surgeries that can take 16 hours. Not all the time though. \n\nAnother part is: when you're on call, you're on call. It's optional past a certain amount of hours though. When they are on call for a weekend there is a shift already working but if the person is needed they come in. Sometimes they go a whole weekend and don't have to go in at all. Sometimes they go in A LOT. My mom actually loves being on call (minus missing fun events) because she makes a shitload of money doing it.",
"Army pilot checking in: a major part of academic instruction is focused on aeromed and fatigue. Fatigue, classified into acute, chronic, and motivational exhaustion aka burnout, only compound with time. One creates the next and so on so forth. Also, studies have shown that working into your 16th hor and beyond have the same mental effects as consuming alcohol and being drunk.\n\nNow I am no doctor and certainly not a medical professional, but it seems that there is nothing to gain from working beyond 12 hours. I know I wouldn't want a doctor operating on me in his 20th hour on shift.",
"There are some pretty solid answers and some others that are way off the mark. It basically just boils down to there being a lot of work to do and they can't \"do it tomorrow\" like you might be able to do in some professions. Sometimes that means finishing a case before heading home (e.g., your shift ends at 5 and a case comes in at 4:45 that holds you at the hospital for another couple of hours), other times it's due to unexpected issues popping up (e.g., a complication during surgery which takes additional time to address).",
"As someone who is constantly researching business entities (for-profit and not-for-profit), these questions always amaze me. \"Why does a company or industry do X, Y, Z?\"\nBecause it has been determined to be more profitable. End of story. That is it...that is all that matters. Everything else is just window dressing.",
"because the people running the show in the medical industry in this country are incompetent greed pigs and try to keep supply of docs down so they can make a higher profit. yes they are more prone to make a mistake. yes it's dangerous and stupid.",
"Where do doctors work 36 hour shifts? My parents are docs and nobody I know has ever been scheduled for more than 12.",
"In addition to these answers, many tired doctors take amphetamines and then are no longer tired doctors",
"I am an anesthesiologist and I work in Germany. \nI used to have 7-11 24h shifts a month and my 8hour shifts turned easily to 10 hours. I did it because there were only 5 of us in the hospital so there was no other choice but work, work, work to ensure continuity of care. \nThe only thing I learnt during those crazy hours was that everybody makes mistakes, sometimes grave mistakes. \nThe \"why\" is almost self-evident:\nYou have an infinite amount of medical needs and finite amount of resources. So either:\n\n1. ration/stretch the resources: it's already being done (cheapest meds, bullying doctors into working unpaid hours, transferring the patients in need of expensive therapies to another hospital in order to save resources, institute price controls, etc. Amusingly, the communists tried to enforce price controls repeatedly not only with medical care but with all the goods and it only made the shortages worse. A good example is Venezuela in present time. I guess the Germans have to try it too.\n\n2. limit the medical services (aka deny care in some cases). \n\nPolitically it's easier to just ration the resources, (all in the name of \"efficiency\" of course) and rape the doctors and nurses, all while cynically thanking them for their sacrifice. Something's gotta give. Actually the system is slowly but surely crumbling, but it will take some years before it will be visible to the naked, untrained eye. The coming of millions of refugees will hopefully break the camel's back.",
"There's a variety of reasons (and misconceptions).\n\nThe roles for this are typically emergency and acute care, where there is a value of having a consistent observer and treatment during the relatively rapid time period of the patient's progress. Handing off from doctor to doctor to doctor has drawbacks and isn't efficient either.\n\nThat raises another point which is that the scarcity of these personnel means it would be hard to schedule 3 eight-hour shifts of 3 individuals, and those shifts would still require sizeable overlap.\n\nAs for misconceptions, part of the training is for consistency and reflexively recognition and treatment. Essentially it's *intended* for these doctors to behave robotically in this role, including during fatigue. Also these shifts typically aren't 24 hours of intense activity. There's opportunity for naps and down time in which an on site doctor can be woken at a moment's notice if necessary.\n\nAs for whether I think it's a good or bad practice, I'd say it good given the current rigging of health care systems. But simply changing the schedule to a \"regular\" one would be a downgrade. But if I had my way, the scarcity issue would be solved by training a large glut of doctors and nurses and PA's. Medicine could become like a regular job without god complexes and absurd labor costs. If we had abundant doctors, that would solve the issues of time and attention to overlap and observation and diagnosis.",
"I have no answer here but what I find fascinating is that the question asks about doctors doing 24 to 36 hour shifts. And then I read all the answers and noticed the answers and of course the question relates to the United States.\n\n\nSo interestingly as British citizen, where I am only aware of doctors/nurses doing 12 hour shifts I started wondering surely the 24 to 36 hour shifts sounds unreal. But is cleary not a typo because OP conciously put 24 and 36.\n\nAs a non medical person and merely an engineer having only worked a maximum of 12 hour shifts (where one does get tired doing, but eventually get used to over time), I find it absolutely mind boggling that medics in the US do those kind of hours.\n\n\nThe answers and reasons given to OP's question is also interesting.\n\n\nAs such, I take my hat off to them, and I genuinely applaud the staff and the service they give over those crazy hours.\n\n\nBut the real message I get here is how different the medical care system is in the US. Here in the UK we have the National Health Service. It's a pretty amazing mostly free service and I am forever thankful for it. And I also wonder as an additional ELI5 why the working hours of medics here in the UK are much less?",
"In the US you have to go through four years of undergraduate studies, four years of medical school, and then complete an up to five year residency to practice medicine as a doctor without supervision. If you complete a residency in the US you are set for life with the highest paying and most respected career. The American Medical Association lobbies to restrict the number of residencies for doctors in the US. Any changes that would reduce the hours worked by doctors that would also reduce their pay will be opposed by the AMA. \n\nIf there were more slots for doctors to complete a residency, or if they were shorter, there would be more doctors. If the US allowed doctors who had completed their residency in Canada or other countries there would be more doctors. If there were more doctors, or if other medical staff could do some of the work that was previously only handled by doctors, doctors would not have to work as many hours. In some cases there are medical advances that make it easier to care for patients, and in many cases it is actually more complicated now that it was previously.",
"In new Zealand the most we'd work is 14 hours, which is the usual 8-4 and then having to cover the evening shift. We'd do this once a week, occasionally both days on the weekend. ED shifts, which are far more suited to rostered work, dont have this anywhere I've been, it's all in roughly 8 hour blocks.\n\nPeople arguing for continuity are underestimating how tired you get after even 10 hours of work. It's ridiculous to think having the same tired doctor is better than a fresh new one. That is what a good patient handover is for. We're finally coming to realise how patients suffer when docs work long hours; the US and UK are lagging behind in this development.\n\nI've heard from doctors in the nhs that if you work long hours a portion of that goes into time off, so there's an incentive to work stupid hours. This I vehemently disagree with, it's extremely greedy. If you care about patient welfare then you should be spreading out your work week, not squashing it into stupidly long days just to accrue time off.",
"Industrialization and traditionalism, mixed with a healthy dose of \"I had to trudge through the snow 20 miles each way, and by gum you upstarts are gonna do it too\". Hospitals became standardized at a time when Americans worked long hours with few breaks, even children, and workers were seen as little more than cogs in a greater machine. As hospitals conglomerated, the organizations in charge favored efficiency and cost cutting over the health of patients, doctors, and nurses. The profits were channeled into major lobbying campaigns used to preserve the status quo while limiting regulations and the threat of malpractice. Without incentive to prioritize health over profits, and massive barriers to entry for the profession, there's little reason or ability for hospital administrators to rock the boat. The healthcare system runs on the same principles as puppy mills.",
"They make a lot of money, making money involves lots of hours of work.\n\nFor doctors this is all they do. Constantly.\n\nIt is shocking to me how devoted doctors are. When they arent in their office, they are running around from one hospital to another, hundreds of miles of driving, day after day.\n\nEven my typical family doctor works his ass off.\n\nOffice open from 7am till late at night. My next appt is going to be at 6:30pm. I dont know how late he does that.\n\nEvery doc ive ever been to works crazy hours and too much.\n\nThey are usually great people.\n\nI wouldnt trade off my life like that, not even for the money.",
"Are they tired? Yes. Is it dangerous? Sure, but it's also dangerous to hand off your work to someone completely new every 8 hours.\n\nImagine you're in the hospital for 8 days. If you got a new doctor every 8 hrs, that's 3 times a day where the doc that is now looking after you wasn't there to see what happened to you during the last 16 hrs. \n\nIts like reading a book, but every few chapters you stop and someone else reads a few chapters then tells you about it. The will be errors and there will be information lost. That's more dangerous than just being tired, apparently.",
"Netters nuts makes good points. \n\nBasically the way I see it doctors (in the uk) are worked like dogs because there's no money in the nhs. It wasnt uncommon for doctors working in the evenings to be on less per hour than cleaners working alongside them. \n\nYes the newer lot just dont have the experience and with respect arent as good as those who worked horrid shifts but I think that's just incidental, not the reason they had horrid shifts which was always financial in my opinion.",
"ELI5 version: You know how people are bad at the Telephone Game? Well, really bad stuff happens when you play the telephone game in a hospital setting with someone's life and well being on the line. Even a half asleep tired doctor is better at keeping track of the Telephone game phrase than a dozen perfectly rested doctors. So you get 12 and 24 hour shifts because the errors in passing on information far out weight the errors in having a tired doctor.",
"In UK doctors are kept in short supply in an agreement between the BMA and the government in order to keep wages as high as possible. This does however mean that some doctors have to work long hours at the start of their career, but when their pay grade starts to rapidly escalate many (the majority of GPs for example) go part time and then retire early leading to yes you guessed it, further shortages, scarcity of doctors and higher wages.",
"Anesthesiologist here. I still work 24 hours shifts. The main reason that most in my profession still do is labor and delivery coverage (people need epidurals and cesarean sections at all hours) and emergency surgeries. If I split my shift into two 12 hr shifts, I would essentially have to work 3-4 weekends per month. I'd much rather work 1-2 weekends and have the other two completely off.",
"My cousin is a trauma surgeon at B & W in Boston. He described patient hand off like a game of telephone - you lose a few of the details everytime you pass them on to the next person. If everyone is working 8 hour shifts, you lose 3 times as many details as if you work 24 hour shifts.",
"Funding and budget issues, usually. [In New Zealand junior doctors have been striking for better hours.](_URL_12_) \n\nI'm not a doctor myself so I'm not equipped to say exactly why, all the other comments here are really good, but the news pieces about the junior doctors striking in New Zealand might be good reading material alongside everyones' advice :)",
"Medical resident hours are capped at 80 hours a week now, but a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that working longer hours doesn't result in worse patient outcomes. Medicine is very data driven, and if rigorously conducted research says that it's better for patients to work longer, that's what they'll do.\n\n_URL_13_",
"There are only 5 of us and babies don't usually deliver themselves. Have to divide shifts in 1 or sometimes 2 day chunks. Not ideal but would need more docs to make it work any different, ie, with more rest time after a busy night.",
"If doctors are in such low supply, why don't medical schools just accept more people? There are tons of very smart people who don't get into medical school or can't afford it.",
"I'm a shift worker for the electrical utility industry. It seems shift work is worked mostly in 12s because it's easy to relieve each other and cover 24 hours a day.",
"A combat corpsman in Vietnam, I learned to get sleep anywhere anytime. It paid for itself during my residency and even saved lives. The call room is an essential.",
"most interns come from third world countries (myself included) and are willing to do anything to be accepted in the residency programs.\n\nlife is cruel and we need money",
"TIL: Most doctors (e.g. those here) are honest, ethical, and dedicated to the profession and the people they treat.",
"It is mostly a Yank thing, because you make it so long, expensive and difficult to become a doctor.",
"Budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts. You can't report record profits without lots of budget cuts.",
"The simple answer is that the hospitals around here are so understaffed there's no other choice",
"If someone's life depended on you, would you quit after 8h shift?"
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"url": [
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"http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1787406",
"http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Abstract/2005/12000/Lost_in_Translation__Challenges_and_Opportunities.5.aspx",
"https://depts.washington.edu/respcare/public/hmc_files/journal_club/articles/20090406/Handoffs_causing_harm_a_survery_of_medical_and_surgical_house_staff.pdf",
"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.577.4651&rep=rep1&type=pdf",
"http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf",
"https://hbr.org/2006/10/sleep-deficit-the-performance-killer",
"http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/09/04/aje.kws139.abstract",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/",
"https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp14112-fsp-ppt-6037.htm",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qJCzjyi-dE",
"http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/321021/second-junior-doctor-strike-looking-likely",
"http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/02/02/465248609/study-suggests-surgical-residents-can-safely-work-longer-shifts"
]
} | train_eli5 | Why do many doctors work in crazy 24-36 hours shifts?
Shouldn't they be more prone to make a mistake because they're tired? Isn't that dangerous? | [
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3dpt5a | If there is a past image of our world being projected through space, could we use technology to intercept those images and see what our world looked like millions of years ago? | Would it be possible to if we had stronger technologies to reach out into space, light years away and retrieve past image data of our planet and essentially get photos of our planets history? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The only way we could see an image of the past earth would be if it were reflected back to us. If there was some gigantic mirror out in space then we could look at it to see what the Earth looked like in the distant past. But, for many reasons, this isn't practical.\n\nBut, we can't directly catch up with the image of our world because it would be travelling at the speed of light. In order to catch up with it we would have to travel faster than the speed of light which is impossible.",
"No, any technology we make won't be able to go faster then light. If we use mirrors, the light still has a million year head start.",
"Our current understanding of physics says no. Also mirrors wouldnt really work due to scattering, absorbtion etc. If we had stronger technologies, like making use of theoretical wormeholes and place a a powerful telescope on a good place a few million light years away, we could totaly obtain image data. But in order to get good images, we would also need way better telescopes than we have now. To be millions or thousands of light years away and obtain images that good to enable seeing history unfold is totally not doable today, just think of the hubble photos of just pluto for example, even the new James web telescope would do it. \ntl;dr: Possible, yes, not now, maybe later, needs scyfy wormeholes and super awesome telescopes"
],
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} | {
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | If there is a past image of our world being projected through space, could we use technology to intercept those images and see what our world looked like millions of years ago?
Would it be possible to if we had stronger technologies to reach out into space, light years away and retrieve past image data of our planet and essentially get photos of our planets history? | [
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3l1p4r | Why do far Eastern people generally have thin eyes? As in the genetic reason if there is one. | Sorry if this in un-PC...actually fuck being PC, it's an honest question. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I have read it is thoughts be an adaptation to extreme cold. Eskimo use snow goggles that have no lenses but have thin slits to prevent snow blindness...similar to squinting all the time. Also, Asians have the epicanthic fold, which is like an extra eyelid over to top one, possibly adding some insulation from cold...or making it easier to sleep under a minight sun.",
"Their eyes aren't thinner. They just have an extra layer of skin under their eyes that make them looking thinner."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why do far Eastern people generally have thin eyes? As in the genetic reason if there is one.
Sorry if this in un-PC...actually fuck being PC, it's an honest question. | [
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1f22wt | Can someone explain the Story of Classic Doctor Who and the history of the Great Time War? | I've seen all of the 2005 to present day Doctor Who but I'm still confused on the backstory of the Great Time War and the story of Classic Doctor Who. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The time war is not explained during the classic series. It was something that happened between the classic series and the new one, and has only been elaborated on in brief mentions and a flashback or two. \n\nThere's been a lot of speculation that this will be the subject of this year's Christmas special, which is rumoured to be 120 minutes in length.",
"It happened between the previous series and the new one so, for the most part, everything that there is to know about it is included in the 2005-present show."
],
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Can someone explain the Story of Classic Doctor Who and the history of the Great Time War?
I've seen all of the 2005 to present day Doctor Who but I'm still confused on the backstory of the Great Time War and the story of Classic Doctor Who. | [
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2usdw1 | Why do people upload torrents? | Like they aren't getting anything in response for their work, right? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"On private trackers it's important to seed as much as, or more than, you download, both for the community contribution and to simply be allowed to continue using that tracker.\n\nOn public trackers it's probably either a sense of community, or people just don't realize that they're also seeding when they finish a download."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do people upload torrents?
Like they aren't getting anything in response for their work, right? | [
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250jhf | Why do electronics get ruined by water? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Non purified water is a wonderful conductor of electricity. electricity will follow the path of least resistance. In devices electricity is only supposed to go where it is designed to go. the water lets the electricity go places it shouldnt and the magic smoke escapes.",
"The water basically creates circuits around the circuits. This leads to excess current in places that cannot handle the current. This is known as a short circuit. When things receive more current than they can handle, they tend to catch fire or explode."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why do electronics get ruined by water?
| [
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2q1izq | Why can't recovering drug addicts have alcohol? | Why do they have to quit alcohol as well to prevent relapse? Also alot (as portrayed by T.V.) seems to be able to smoke cigarettes as well so why isn't that not allowed as well? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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],
"text": [
"Some recovering drug addicts do drink alcohol without abusing it. Though, the statistics seem to say that most recovering addicts cannot drink alcohol without also abusing it.\n\nMost recovery programs teach that if you are an addict to once substance, you have the increased likelihood to abuse other addictive substances. As such, their advice is to avoid those substances in general.\n\nThe deal with nicotine (smoking tobacco) is this... while it is definitely addictive, its effects are not socially destructive, as the effects of alcohol, or cocaine, or heroin (or whatever). Nicotine definitely is hazardous to one's health (and even to others in the form of second-hand smoke), but its effects are mostly personal and take a relatively long time to show up. It is unlikely that no matter how many tobacco cigarettes one smokes, you are not going to be so intoxicated that while driving you will cause an accident resulting in the injury or deaths of other people.",
"Alcohol suppresses inhibitions. After a few beers, it's easy to do things that you said you wouldn't do, or that you know are bad for you. In short, alcohol can make you say fuck it and call up your dealer even though you know you shouldn't.",
"They choose to completely abstain because they believe that they do not have the self control to stop drinking after starting. \n\nAddiction is a habit it needs to be broken entirely because the substance is fairly trivial to the affliction. I have never met a coke head with healthy drinking habits.",
"The problem with addiction isn't so much the substance itself, though there is chemical dependency for things like cocaine and heroin, but there's such a thing as poly-drug abuse where a person with a seriously unhealthy drug habit uses all kinds of drugs. They're addicted to being high, not necessarily to any particular drug."
],
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"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why can't recovering drug addicts have alcohol?
Why do they have to quit alcohol as well to prevent relapse? Also alot (as portrayed by T.V.) seems to be able to smoke cigarettes as well so why isn't that not allowed as well? | [
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w08av | How/Why does the NBA's poison pill contract, like the one offered by Houston to Asik and by Toronto to Fields, work? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"c595q7x"
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"text": [
"Some teams cannot go over the cap or wish not to hurt themselves in the long run with a contract that is \"poisoned\". Using Asik's example, his contract I believe is made to go 5m/5m/15m in '13, '14, and '15. But when an opposing team offers this kind of contract to a restricted free agent, it is counted evenly across all three years like 8.3m/8.3m/8.3m, which gives it some cap flexibility across all three years. If the Bulls choose to match that offer sheet (since he's a restricted free agent), it will count against their team the same way Asik's contract is structure. So during 2013 and 2014 years, it will have a 5 million dollar penalty against their cap, but in 2015, Asik will be counted as 15 million in their salary budget and teams don't like to commit so much money to a player like him, because it severely hampers your ability to sign free agents. Therefore, Chicago is less inclined to match Asik and let him go, even though he might be considered a valuable asset to them. Toronto is doing the same thing to the Knicks, since there are rumors of Nash going to the Knicks, so Toronto is sort of bullying the Knicks in order to choose between Fields or Nash."
],
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How/Why does the NBA's poison pill contract, like the one offered by Houston to Asik and by Toronto to Fields, work?
| [
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5ymva9 | Yeti Coolers in Southern Culture | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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],
"text": [
"It's not really an explainable thing. It is just like any other luxury item. There may be better cheaper options but people want the brand. It is like buying a store brand cereal vs a name brand cereal. There really is no difference and the taste is virtually identical but people have an idea in there head that the name brand is better."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Yeti Coolers in Southern Culture
[removed] | [
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15wht9 | why there is so much "US Only" content on the internet | It makes me feel like being in a third world country. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"c7qfz77",
"c7qg2sx",
"c7qg86a"
],
"text": [
"You mean TV shows, like how we can't get on the Daily Show YouTube channel in the UK?\n\nIt's largely because once you've made your programme in your native country, you can then sell the broadcast rights to channels in other countries.\n\nWhen you've got a show to sell, the price will be much higher if you can go to the negotiating table and say: \"This is a very popular show, and nobody in your country will have seen these episodes. They are exclusive to you. People will tune in to your channel just to see it first.\" than if you say: \"Our show is really good but your audience has already seen the best bits on YouTube.\"",
"Mostly because of copyright and broadcasting rights.\n\nSay you are in the UK and want to watch an HBO show. HBO's agreement with, say BBC, might require that they not allow UK viewers to stream their show because BBC wants to get more paying viewers. HBO is then forced to forward these terms to Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, etc as part of those sites being able to show that HBO show.\n\nIn rare cases (like Iran), there may be an actual embargo in place that legally limits what can be \"exported\". Downloads are actually considered a type of export in those cases.",
"I'll trade you hulu for internet poker, deal?"
],
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"url": []
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | why there is so much "US Only" content on the internet
It makes me feel like being in a third world country. | [
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2z0r2t | Where does the 420 in '420 Blaze It' come from? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The true birth of 420 dates back to the early 1970s, when it became the hour of cannabis consumption among high school students in San Rafael. Even in mellow Marin County, stronghold of the Grateful Dead, no concessions were made to allow puffing during school hours.\n\nSo a group of stoners calling themselves \"the Waldos\" — because they liked to hang out in front of a wall — would pass each other in the halls, exchanging knowing glances and muttering \"420 Louis!\" One told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, \"It was just a joke, but it came to mean all kinds of things, like, 'Do you have any?' or 'Do I look stoned?' \" They used 420 as a code word for their activities and the time said activities would take place.\n\nThe group met in front of the statue of 19th-century French scientist Louis Pasteur, as well as other spots on school grounds, to get high at 4:20 p.m. It's said that the pack of teens would sometimes roam the campus, searching for a rumored marijuana patch.\n\nThe term \"420\" was widely in use by the end of the 1970s. Deadheads spread it outward like a virus from their San Rafael ground zero. Within a decade, pot smokers were using it across the country and around the world.\n\nThe stoner bible High Times started using the term \"420\" as early as 1990, and later bought the website _URL_2_, which includes videos, news, horticulture tips, activism and conspiracy links (\"Will the LAPD Have Armed Drones Hunting Suspects?\").\n\nVarious members of the Waldos have surfaced over the years, showing letters with postmarks from the 1970s that refer to \"420\" to authenticate their claims. Sources as reputable as Wikipedia and _URL_0_ have also confirmed this origin story.\n\n\n_URL_1_",
"4:20 PM was popularized in the stoner community in California in the late 60's early seventies. A group of friends, I think they called themselves \"the Waldos\" always met and \"blazed it\" around that time every day. They began to use 4:20 as a code for smoking. One of them had an in with the Grateful Dead, like he was a roadie or something like that. They used the 4:20 slang around the band and crew, and it just stuck.",
"There should be an AMA with one of \"The Waldos\"",
"[This article](_URL_3_) gives the best explanation for where 420 came from and all the myths that aren't true. If you don't want to read all the way through it basically was a term used by students in California to covertly say to one another \"you getting high after school?\". 420 referred to the time that they would meet up and smoke."
],
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"url": []
} | {
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} | {
"url": [
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"420.com",
"http://www.laweekly.com/news/mythbusting-420-its-one-true-origin-and-a-whole-lot-of-false-ones-4177495"
]
} | train_eli5 | Where does the 420 in '420 Blaze It' come from?
| [
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5wo6gj | What are penny stocks as mentioned in The Wolf of Wall Street? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The simplification is that penny stocks are stocks worth less than a certain amount. Every country defines them differently, but in the US the SEC considers any stock trading under 5$ as penny stocks.\n\nMany of these are from smaller companies and the reason people invest in them is because it has possibilities of higher rewards quicker since any movement has a lot more effect than on blue chip stocks (established companies like banks). A stock worth 0.60$ gaining 0.05 is a lot more important than a stock worth 60$ gaining 0.05. Plus many penny stocks are newer companies so there is more upside since any good news (finding a gold mine, developing a new software) can create faith and make the price rise drastically. The risk is that the company doesnt find that gold mine or interesting software and the price falls even more. Just like rises, drops have a significant effect. Its a high-risk high-reward game.\n\nSince you mentioned the Wolf of Wall Street, Ill go on a side-note: OTC (over the counter) or pink sheets. \n\nOTC is another stock market in the US (just like Nasdaq or NYSE), that is less transparent and regulated, even more so during the years in TWoWS. Usually, companies that register on the OTC are either too small to enter the bigger exchanges or are unable to pass the required audits (more shady). There have been examples over the years of incredibly shady companies (2 guys in a shack wanting to start a pharma manufacturing company type of thing). Unscrupulous brokers would sell those to people as a the next big thing and people would buy that. And pink slips had very high commissions to encourage brokers to sell them, regardless of whether or not they fit with the client. Plus if a company was registered on NYSE, people could confirm a lot of information like number of employees, budget, etc. But OTC having so little audit requirements made it easy to sell a shack as a corporate headquarter and 2 guys as a team of experienced scientists. These are the pink sheets DiCaprio sells when he moves to the shady broker after losing his job and then out of a garage. \n\n[OTC](_URL_0_) still exists today and is more regulated, although still nearly nowhere as much as the main exchanges (in NA thats NYSE, NASDAQ and TSX) and are not as transparent (even with Bloomberg paying programs we cannot see the bid and ask for stocks, something Google Finance has for free for the main exchanges and you cannot see other important information like market depth. \n\n\n\nWhile were at it we can talk about the pump and dump that they also do in the movie. Pump and dump is buying a bunch of stocks of a company that doesnt trade much and then convincing a bunch of unsuspecting people to buy a lot of shares as well. Because the volume isnt high, if many people are buying that share, it will drive the price up (market price is based on supply and demand. If demand goes up and supply is unchanged, the price rises, sometimes drastically). Once you sold it to enough people that the price is well above value, you sell all your share on the market taking advantage of the high prices. Since suddenly supply rises quickly and not demand, the price will fall. The person organizing the scheme makes a lot of money, but all the small investors that bought in while it was climbing (so over its actual value) are now left with a share that is worth less then what they paid and so are losing money. It works with all share (they do it with the Madden IPO in the movie, keeping shares for themselves and then selling hard), but it works better or faster with penny stocks that just \"found a cure for cancer\" or \"the biggest oil reserve in the pacific, BUY NOW!\".\n\nHope this helps! Finally an ELI5 in my field that doesnt have 1000 answers! Feels good!",
"When a company goes public it have to split the company into equally sized shares. So they have to decide how big each share should be. If you have too few shares and the company grows to become very big then each share might be more then most investors are willing to invest in the company. So a lot of small companies will rather make many small shares instead so they do not have the same problems as they grow. So you are talking pennies on the shares instead of hundreds of dollars that is more common in big companies. These small companies are also not able to be listed on the big stock markets and have to settle with smaller stock markets that specialize in these kinds of stocks. These markets are more popular with venture capitalists as they might hit the jackpot with a trade but if a company goes bankrupt they have not lost much. There also tends to be less oversight in these smaller markets so you can find a lot of predatory marketing techniques and straight out scams as there is less chance of getting caught.",
"There are some smaller companies that are publicly traded, whether they were larger and declined or found alternative ways of going public. These smaller companies trade on less regulated exchanges (called the pink sheets) and aren't well known so often trade very lightly. So it's easy to convince somebody who sees a company trading for a quarter that it's about to take off (some story about why their business fortunes are about to take off), and greed has them imagining it going to $2 or $5 (that's still a low stock price!) and how much they'd make. Then once a few people start buying into this stock, it does go up and that convinces more people to buy in, and it keeps going up... then it doesn't and falls back to earth. Basically a stock market bubble on a single stock instead of the whole market."
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} | train_eli5 | What are penny stocks as mentioned in The Wolf of Wall Street?
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2s4s98 | Where does the energy for the rotation of the earth come from? | I'm going to assume it's the gravitational pull from the sun - but how does that translate into rotation? And similarly, what about the the orbit of the planets? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gravity and conservation of angular momentum. The planets and the solar system all started out as a big ball of gas/dust. As this ball collapsed inwards due to gravity, it gained rotation. The more it collapses in, the more the rotation increases to conserve angular momentum. The energy for this increased rotation comes from gravitational potential. The more spread out the ball is, the more gravitational potential energy it has. So as it collapses, the gravitational potential gets turned into kinetic energy which is seen as an increase in the rotation rate.",
"The Earth was rotating before, so it continues to rotate. Nothing is stopping it, so it continues, as is one of the 3 laws of motion."
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I'm going to assume it's the gravitational pull from the sun - but how does that translate into rotation? And similarly, what about the the orbit of the planets? | [
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2ka1uc | How did "zzz" become associated with sleeping? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It appears to be trying to communicate the sound of snoring in letter form. The first use of the letter 'z' to indicate snoring seems to be from the 'American Dialect Society's Dialect notes, Volume 5, 1918'. It was then used in a 1919 book titled 'Boy's Life'. Then Life Magazine described it in 1922.\n\n > Snoring is indicated by \"ZZZZZZZ.\" which often is supplemented by a. picture like this: Profanity may be conveyed by a series of punctuation marks and hieroglyphics, such as : ?;!f - Life Magazine, Volume 79.\n\nThese seem to be the earliest uses of 'z' as a snoring sound.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: Previous response wasn't detailed enough.",
"The comic strip \"The Katzenjammer Kids\" was the first to use the z's to depict snoring/sleeping back on August 2, 1903. It was *mostly* used in comic strips until it was shown in the popular Boy Scout's magazine \"Boy's Life\" in January 1919. \n \nIf you're interested in the full story, there's a detailed article with sources [you can see here.](_URL_1_)",
"Snoring has different onomatopoeias in different languages: _URL_3_\n\nThis article will explain it much better than I can do:\n > As the sounds made while sleeping are quite difficult to represent with letters, the artists chose zzz, because it best represents the sound. Capital ZZZs generally mean loud snoring or the like, generally with large, old men, or in an ironic situation by a woman (comic strips are also famous for holding to social norms of gender interpretation). In fact it has made itself into its own meaning ‚ it no longer needs explanation and is generally accepted world wide as a representation of sleeping. The reason it even became what it now is, is almost lost, such as the meaning of the wrong end of the stick. I’ll let you figure that one out.\n\n_URL_4_\n\nMore info: _URL_4_",
"I always thought it was as the last word in the alphabet. Sort of like a way to say this day is closed.",
"Is it possible to explain this like you're not 5?",
"I believe that the term originated in \"The Katzenjammer Kids\" but until then most comics wrote things like \"rnklkfmstttt\" to indicate snoring. Zzz was smoother, an became more commonly used.",
"I remember from old cartoons sleeping would sound like a whistling noise. I assumed it was an onomatopoeia of that whistling sound. Some people pronounced \"z\" with a slight whistle, and I've also heard people snore as if they were whistling so... \"zzzzzz\" is just a whistling snore.",
"I figured it was either that \"zzz\" sounded like snoring or that sawing a log is for some reason a metaphor for sleeping and that sounds like \"zzz\". \n\nMaybe both. I hope someone will address the log sawing metaphor.",
"I thought it came from cartoons when they were 'sawing logs'.",
"From: _URL_5_\n\n\"First of all, zzzz (or z-z-z-z) is sound of snoring, from at least 1918. (Sometimes \"a tiny saw cutting through a log\" [1948] would be used, and both the snore and saw would make the same z-z-z-z sound.) Over time, this became associated with sleep in general, but most comic reference books (e.g. 2006's KA-BOOM! A Dictionary of Comic Book Words, Symbols & Onomatopoeia, 2008's Comic books: how the industry works) still mainly associate it with snoring.\"",
"When people snore (Is that the English word for it?) and they exhale, it sometimes ends as a whistle. I'll try to type it, it's going to look silly but you'll get the point. *(inhale) SCHNOOOOOOOOOOOO - (exhale) ZZZZzzhhhsj* Yeah something like that, If you've ever heard someone snore (?) you'll know what I'm saying. Youtube it if not. \n\n\n\nEdit: I don't know if this is the origin, but it's my attempt at making sense of it.",
"In addition to the aforementioned, the \"zzz\" sound is also credited to the expression \"sawing a log\" used to describe people snoring. The zzz's can be interpreted as onomatopoeia representing that expression and snoring in cartoons.",
"Meh, it was probably a bitter fanatic of the letter \"Z\" who was upset at how little the letter is used in daily usage and made it their life's work to incorporate it into daily life."
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"http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3063/why-is-the-letter-z-associated-with-sleep",
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias#Snoring",
"http://www.knowswhy.com/why-does-zzz-mean-sleep/",
"http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/27045/how-did-the-letter-z-become-to-be-associated-with-sleeping-snoring"
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} | train_eli5 | How did "zzz" become associated with sleeping?
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2r5rv6 | How the hell does gravity pull things through a vacuum? | I understand what gravity does, and how it acts on objects, but my question is how, when between the earth and the moon is just a vacuum, is the earth's gravity able to act on it? How does the moon "know" its supposed to be moving this direction? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It doesn't pull, exactly. It may be easier to think of space as tablecloth pulled taut; if you put something on it, it makes a dent. The \"dent\" is the deformation of space by the mass of the object. \n\nThis deformation literally bends space and results in the object still going in a straight line that has been deformed by gravity.\n\n\ntl;dr: you are a human tractor beam",
"It's \"attracted\" to the Earth because of it's much larger size.\n\nIt's like opposite polarity magnets, they would still be attracted to each other even in a vacuum environment, right?"
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} | train_eli5 | How the hell does gravity pull things through a vacuum?
I understand what gravity does, and how it acts on objects, but my question is how, when between the earth and the moon is just a vacuum, is the earth's gravity able to act on it? How does the moon "know" its supposed to be moving this direction? | [
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1aq14b | Why do my joints crack and click during random movements? | is there any possible way to reduce the amount of this? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your joints or ligaments are filled with fluid and when you move it can create a partial vacuum. It expands and then rapidly collapses, creating a popping sound.\n\nReduce the amount? Don't crack your knuckles. But there's no evidence that this can lead to arthritis or any other harm."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do my joints crack and click during random movements?
is there any possible way to reduce the amount of this? | [
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6b93nr | Why are 'geniuses' always good at math? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It honestly depends how you view geniuses.\n\nIf like a lot of people you think geniuses dont simply have to be very smart and have a high IQ. For example if you think people can be lyrical geniuses or comedic geniuses etc. Than they likely wont be good at math.\n\nIf you are only talking about smart people they are likely good at math because its just numbers and formulaes etc. You can learn the basics from a young age and perfect it while your brain is still very fresh and open this is why high IQ is usually born instead of made. As well as this its a fundamental part of life, you will always need math in life but other school stuff is less important"
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} | train_eli5 | Why are 'geniuses' always good at math?
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43jigi | Why is it so hard to grip things tightly right after you wake up? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While you sleep, your body makes a chemical that helps keep you motionless during your active dreaming. In some people this can take a few seconds or minutes to end when you wake up. This can sometimes do things like you are describing.\n\nIn its scariest form, there are people who wake up paralyzed every morning!",
"This is interesting. I usually wake up an hour or so before I get to work. Some mornings if I'm working on electrical I find it very difficult to strip insulation off wires because the hand that grips the wire keeps slipping because I can't grip it right. It usually takes about an hour after I start for my hands to \"warm up\".",
"I did a quick google, and found [this](_URL_0_).\n\nI love how similarly the comments and upvoting have played out.",
"Are you a drinker?\n\nGoogle Saturday Night Palsy.\n\nWhile I don't necessarily think you have a medical issue, it is possible that you're sleeping in a way that pinches a nerve or cuts off circulation.",
"If you're talking about having a weak grip, rather than complete loss of function as in the case of sleep paralysis, then you may be experiencing a nerve problem. Various different conditions can cause nerve damage/compression to varying degrees which can result a lot of different symptoms. Some of the fairly common problems can cause issues with the nerves throughout the hands/arms. one of the many symptoms is weakness in any or all of the muscles that those nerves lead to. Sometimes, the way you sleep can irritate this issue overnight by compressing the nerves while you sleep, and then you experience symptoms the next morning\n\n\nSometimes when I sleep if I lay on my side, my arms will \"fall asleep\" and sometimes my forearm muscles and therefore my grip will feel especially weak in the morning. I've also experienced a lot of issues with elbow pain which has kept me out of the gym for a long time now. I've never seen a Dr for any of this but just based on internet research, I think I am experiencing symptoms of cubital tunnel syndrome as well as thoracic outlet syndrome, although there may be another underlying cause of both. Various exercises, stretches, and improvements to my posture have helped me a ton with that so far so I think I'm on the right track. Anyways, just letting you know in case this is what you are experiencing. best thing to do is ask a doctor",
"Like the top comment says, your body produces a chemical that helps you stay motionless while you sleep. So when you wake up it takes a bit for your hands to warm up. I usually have a quick wank to warm my hands up in the morning. and if that's why your asking the question then try using both hands if one hand doesn't grip tight enough!",
"It's the fuzz, this video explains it NSFW:\n\n_URL_1_"
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2rgos9 | What would happen if the United States stopped paying toward the national debt? | If a car loan isn't paid, the bank comes and repossesses it. A whole country can't be repo'd... Can it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The US defaults on its debt. Several nations with abysmal financial systems have done this in recent years.\n\nIf the US government defaulted and needed to borrow money in the future it would have to pay a significantly higher interest rate, since creditors would no longer see the debt as highly secure.\n\nThe US pays a really low interest rate on a lot of its debt since it has a stellar record.\n\nNations like Greece and Argentina have to pay staggering double digit interest rates due to their past (and current) financial woes."
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3nu33q | Why is Russia attacking ISIS a bad thing? Why are not more countries fighting it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of the biggest issues is its approach. IS is one of three issues in Syria currently. On one side you have Assad's regime, which Russia supports. On the other, you have the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad's regime, which America supports. This is the main issue between Russia and America. America sees the Assad regime as oppressive and wrong, and wish it to be overthrown. They're training rebels and supplying weapons for this cause. Russia supports Assad, and is against the resistance to him. America and Russia are aligned in wanting the IS destroyed, but not in terms of how. Russia doesn't mind if the rebels are killed alongside IS fighters, and are less worried with how they achieve their goals. They see Assad as the lesser of two evils, and don't wish to destabilize the area by removing him. On that note, a destabilized Syria would likely become a stronghold for IS. America sees Assad as oppressive, and wishes to see him removed, much like Saddam Hussein. This is obviously a conflict of interest between the two, and the media is selling it as Russia blatantly going against the US.",
"Russia has captured the moral high ground in framing their activities as \"attacking ISIS,\" but its real interests are stabilizing Syria with Assad remaining in power. Likewise, the US and its allies in the region (Saudi Arabia, etc.) are more interested in toppling removing Assad than eliminating ISIS. There are a number of militant groups that are being funded and used in this proxy war. ISIS is simply one that got out of hand.",
"A major concern is that Russia is not specifically targeting ISIS, but any target Bashar Al-Assad gives them. This would include ISIS, but also independent organizations fighting him in civil war, even parties which the United States works with. \n\nAs far as 'why not more countries' there are quite a few countries involved in this conflict."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is Russia attacking ISIS a bad thing? Why are not more countries fighting it?
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26i8aj | Why is the standard for songs 3.5-4 minutes? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because of vinyl. When records were the standard for recorded music, the standard size for a record of a single was just large enough for, at most, four minutes of audio. To make the records much larger would have made them more costly and thus the music industry would not have been able to sell as many due to increased costs to the purchaser. A lot of space was needed to mark the complex sounds of music on records, after all. \n\nSo in the interests of music being affordable and thus ensure that records became widespread, they were kept to a maximum size that didn't allow for much more than 4 minutes of sound. At this point though, when recorded music can be downloaded easily and with relatively small file sizes. It's more tradition than anything now, though, since for so many decades 3.5-4 minutes have been the norm, nobody wants to change what works and what sells.",
"Remember that many artists might just have this specific length just because the song is naturally composed in such a way.\n\nOthers do so with radio in mind. Radio stations like to place songs in time slots and save others for ads. Shorter, similar length songs make this easy. You can't put a 15 minute song in an 8 minute block.",
"Some of it can be attributed as well to the math behind music and the way producers and artists manufacture them to sound nice.\n\nFirst, most all compositions in popular music (from Rap to Country and everything in between) are in 4/4 time and as such sound best when arranged in blocks of 16 bars that have distinguishable 4 bar phrases within them. You can hear these pretty easily listening to the drums, which often change every 16 bars and have a fill or something else to break up the bits of 4.\n\nSecond, your average song, while a creative piece in it's own right, still follows a formula. Something along the lines of intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-outro or any close variation is what we like to hear. There are of course numerous exceptions to this (thank goodness) but nonetheless it's a good rule of thumb.\n\nWhen you put these two together, you're left with a formulaic approach to songwriting that is governed more concretely by 4 and 16 bar expressions that sound good - and thus a \"standard\" song length.\n\nHope this helps!"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is the standard for songs 3.5-4 minutes?
| [
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2ctjl5 | How do cops arrest one armed people? | if a person with 1 arm commits a crime, what do cops do to detain them? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"*The usual method is to cuff the existing hand to the rear, and then put the other cuff through the prisoner's belt. If they don't have a belt, it's preferable to use a belly chain. In an extreme situation where you needed to immobilize someone briefly, you could cuff the existing wrist to the prisoner's ankle.*\n\n^Source: ^_URL_0_",
"They would either cuff him to his pants, or to his belt. They may also use a belly chain or chain his hand to his legs."
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} | {
"url": [
"http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-handcuff-a-one-armed-man"
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} | train_eli5 | How do cops arrest one armed people?
if a person with 1 arm commits a crime, what do cops do to detain them? | [
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8aj9mr | Why is self-plagiarism a concept (outside of academia)? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The author might not own their own work. If King had written those words in an essay and sold or given publication rights to a magazine, it would be self-plagiarization.\n\nAlso, the audience generally has the right to know whether they are hearing an original work. A lot depends on what a reasonable expectation of originality would be. No one goes to an Elton John concert to hear his new stuff, but if you hired someone to be a keynote speaker, you'd expect they will write a new speech tailored to your event. Self-plagiarism in this sense is a more hazy concept and is usually in the real of ethics rather than law.",
"in publishing, if you're (for example) paid to write an editorial for a newspaper, there is an assumption that what you're writing is an original work. If you copy from a past work, not only are there legal issues because someone else may own the publishing rights to that work, you are also not delivering the **original** content that you were paid for.\n\nI'm not familiar with the specific MLK case you reference - but I think most people who do a lot of public speaking (paid or otherwise) tend to deliver the same content repeatedly (with some minor variations)."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is self-plagiarism a concept (outside of academia)?
[deleted] | [
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3vfq4n | why are people allowed to make copies of games like minecraft then survival craft or clash of clans to clash of kings- they all follow the same storyline/ objective but they still don't run into copyright troubles, thanks | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can't patent game mechanics, pure and simple. That's why words with friends could be made despite Scrabble being around (though they would probably have issues if they copied the layout of the multipliers). Story archetypes have been around since the start of stories so you can't really make a story that isn't similar to an existing one. Look at how many competing first person shooters set in WWII there are. Who can claim ownership of that story or mechanics?",
"I play Clash of Clans pretty often and I heard this from someone. \nIf the creators of CoC (Supercell) wanted to take legal action for another game, such as Clash of Kings, it would be pointless. The money they get out of it will be nothing compared to the money they will spend on legal fees. They also know that the copy game will not gain a large following."
],
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | why are people allowed to make copies of games like minecraft then survival craft or clash of clans to clash of kings- they all follow the same storyline/ objective but they still don't run into copyright troubles, thanks
| [
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31dl86 | Since the volume of ash released by the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 lowered the average global temp by ~1.8 degrees Celsius for the following year, what would happen if we did something similar today using a biodegradable substance to combat global warming? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The power of Krakatoa was equivalent to 200 megatons of tnt; or the power of 4 of the most powerful atomic weapons detonated at the same time. 6000 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki. If we replicated this explosion with atomic weapons it would create a fireball 30+ miles wide. I don't know how else to get that much dirt (ash) into the air unless another Krakatoa occurred naturally. Would have some nasty side effects that wouldn't be worth the drop in temperature. Why don't you just take the bus to work instead!",
"What you talking about is called geo-engineering or climate engineering. Scientists have discussed several possible approaches, like increasing cloud cover; fertilizing part of the ocean with iron, which would cause chemical changes that make clouds more reflective; putting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere; putting reflective balloons into the upper atmosphere; painting roofs white; covering 170,000 square kilometres of desert with reflective plastic sheeting; and so on.\n\nThe problem is something called the law of unintended consequences. Any action anyone takes causes things to happen, and some of these things are always unintended. The unintended things can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Small actions usually produce few and small unintended consequences. Large actions, like geo-engineering, can produce large unintended consequences and since there are usually only a few ways to do something right and an infinite number of ways to get it wrong, it is likely that most unintended consequences will be harmful. \n\nGeo-engineering projects that are large enough to have an effect on global climate change have the potential to produce truly disastrous unintended consequences. It could trigger droughts, floods, monster storms, massive crop failures, and things we haven’t thought of yet.\n\nTotally switching from fossil fuels to non carbon releasing energy sources as soon as possible is the best way to mitigate global climate change. We only need the political will and public awareness to do it.",
"The movie [snowpiercer]( _URL_0_) was based on a hypothetical future in which scientists did exactly this. In that movie, this tactic was too effective, freezing the earth. I know it's not an answer to your question, sorry!",
"This has actually been discussed as a possible countermeasure. But the amount of material involved is enormous - keep in mind that Krakatoa's blast was more powerful than any nuke ever detonated. It takes a *lot* of power to get all that up into the stratosphere.",
"So like some kind of chemical trail in the sky, perhaps released by an aircraft or fleet of aircrafts?\n\nPreposterous!"
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"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | Since the volume of ash released by the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 lowered the average global temp by ~1.8 degrees Celsius for the following year, what would happen if we did something similar today using a biodegradable substance to combat global warming?
| [
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1n3fwc | When the Reserve Bank 'makes' money, why does it give it to the banks, and not me? | I want in on that mullah. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The Federal Reserve creates money by purchasing things known as Treasury bonds. They aren't just handing it out to banks."
],
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} | train_eli5 | When the Reserve Bank 'makes' money, why does it give it to the banks, and not me?
I want in on that mullah. | [
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3wihkh | Why does a lower value currency have an advantage in international trade? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you export goods, you usually make the people buying your goods pay you in your domestic currency. If I'm an American company, I want U.S. dollars for my wares; I don't want you to pay me in a foreign currency.\n\nThis means that if the value of the U.S. dollar goes up, it becomes more expensive for people abroad to buy my goods--the price might've staid the same in U.S. dollars, but that now converts to more Euros or Yen. Conversely, if the exchange rate goes down, you can cheaply buy my goods, even though I'm getting the same amount of dollars as before--business will be booming.\n\nThe benefit happens when the currency exchange rate goes down, but there is not inflation in domestic prices to match. If prices in America stay the same, but the exchange rate makes the dollar cheaper, then all of the people abroad are getting a discount, and I still get paid the same amount of money!\n\nFor this reason, countries that want to have lots of exports try to artificially drive down the international value of the currency, while also attempting to combat inflation."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why does a lower value currency have an advantage in international trade?
| [
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6vhy7b | How animals seems to have the sense from birth that fire is bad but humans often have to get burned before realising? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Humans have made a sort of evolutionary tradeoff: we are born with our brains much less-thoroughly developed compared to their adult state than other animals, with the result that we are more adaptable, but must learn all sorts of things that most animals are born knowing, such as how to walk.",
"Regrettably, my cat tried to \"smell\" a burning candle once. He had no idea what fire is. \n\nSmoke on the other hand, makes my cats want to head for low ground.",
"I just want to say that not all animals realize fire is bad. \n\nWhen I go outside to have a fire my chickens are right there... I have to chase them away.\n\nIn the winter we have a huge fire of all the fallen trees - and stuff.. and my livestock critters are not scared. They don't go into it or any thing like that but they don't exactly stay away either.",
"When we started using our hands for tools and started walking on 2 feet, our stance got straighter and our feet got closer to each other. This caused problems for females because giving birth to grown babies was harder due to the tightened vaginal area. Most females died during births and the ones that gave birth earlier without the baby fully grown lived. (Just to clear it up: Human growth occurs much less in the mother's womb than other species like horses and cats.) By this way, human babies started born much younger, which meant they had to complete their development outside the womb. A foal can walk shortly after it is born and a kitten can learn to hunt for birds after weeks it is born. But humans are not like this. They need parental supervision to teach the world for them. Most baby animal can survive wildlife by their own after a short time they are born. But for humans need years of parent care to finally survive by their own. This applies for the fire bad instinct too. Animals can understand when they first encountered the fire it is dangerous because they are developed enough to survive in the wildlife alone. But we need someone else to tell us or experience burn several times to understand that the fire is bad. \n(Side note: it also the fact that humans born undeveloped makes humans like a influenceable doughs. You can raise your children Muslim, Christian, Fascist, Communist, Atheist, Humanist or Anarchist. It is what environment during childhood makes the ideas of the person but when it comes for animals, they are all instincts.) \nI went kind of off-topic but hope you learned something new."
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How animals seems to have the sense from birth that fire is bad but humans often have to get burned before realising?
| [
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49kpdz | Quantum Computing and Quantum Mechanics | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Quantum\" just refers to the idea that you can break up any quantity into small bits, but no smaller. So a \"quantum\" of light is called a photon - you can't have half a photon. Quantum mechanics is just the study of physics when you're dealing with individual quantities like this.\n\nAs for quantum computing, it deals with a particular idea of QM called \"quantum superposition\" - the idea that an atom can actually be in any number of states simultaneously, and that it doesn't \"choose\" what state to be in until you look at it. This is useful in quantum computing because currently, classical bits can only hold either a \"0\" or a \"1\", which is only two states. If you want to represent 4 states, you'd need two bits. Eight states would require the use of 3 bits and so on, as powers of two.\n\nWith quantum bits or \"qubits\", you're dealing with a quantized state to represent your information... anything from the polarization of a photon to the spin of an electron. However with QM, the system is allowed to be in a \"superposition\" of any possible states. So instead of a 1 or a 0, it could be a little bit of 1 and a little bit of 0. This means you're able to hold a lot more information than is generally possible with classical bits.\n\nThe tricky parts of Quantum computing are the actually reading/writing of data, as well as being able to encode the data for storage - many of these quantized states don't have long \"coherence times\"... which basically means they decay very quickly. Often you're able to keep them long enough to compute with them, but not to actually store them for reference later on."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Quantum Computing and Quantum Mechanics
[removed] | [
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ry7wo | EL5 What exactly is meditation, how does it work, and what are the benefits of it? | Title pretty much says it all.
Edit: When I originally posted this it was more mobile, so I didn't want to type out that much. Pretty much I'm curious how meditations affects the mind and body in both a psychological and philological way. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Meditation, as a broad topic, simply refers to any kind of focused thought. This can be anything from thinking deeply and critically about something you have learned or experienced to religious reflection to striving for complete absence of conscious thought. \n\nAs for the benefits of such practices, in many ways you can think of it the same way you think of physical exercise and it also shares many of the same benefits. When you make a regular habit of focusing your attention you will, over time, become better at focusing on one train of thought (or no thought) for longer and longer periods. \n\nThis has many side benefits such as reducing anxiety and stress since you are not focusing on the patterns of thought that cause your body to react in such negative ways. You also learn to calmly approach problems whether they are academic, practical or emotional because you have trained yourself to take a methodical and determined approach to accomplishing such tasks.\n\nTo try out a simple exercise, the next time you read something interesting or learn about a controversial topic take some time to put down what you're doing, turn off any distractions such as the TV or computer and sit quietly and think about what you have just experienced. What was your emotional reaction? What other positions are there on that topic? Can you think of a time when you have encountered something similar before? How does this information impact your life? How does it impact others? Where did this information come from? etc. Do this for at least ten minutes before you even google the topic or seek any other information or discussion of it (but make sure you do eventually look for more information). Keeping a written record of your thoughts is also extremely helpful.",
"That's a hard question because there's actually no one answer. There are lots of different kinds of meditation. All of them have to do with achieving a certain state of mind. Many forms of meditation are passed down as part of a larger culture. Scientists also don't all agree on the effects, but studies have shown that meditation can improve a whole range of things like mood, focus, pain relief, and bodily health.",
"To control your mind, thoughts, and discipline. I think it's different for everyone. For me it clears my mind and puts things into perspective, you realize the little things aren't important. I do it twice, daily for 15 minutes. Try it =)"
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | EL5 What exactly is meditation, how does it work, and what are the benefits of it?
Title pretty much says it all. Edit: When I originally posted this it was more mobile, so I didn't want to type out that much. Pretty much I'm curious how meditations affects the mind and body in both a psychological and philological way. | [
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45821n | Why do we say "cold doesnt exist - its the absence of heat"? Can I say it backwards? "Heat is the absence of cold" | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heat is a form of energy. Cold is nothing, a lack of energy. You can supply energy to something, but you can't supply a lack of energy--you can only draw energy away to another place. The concepts aren't arbitrary; energy is something measurable that follows physical rules, just like matter.",
"It's linked to movement. \n\nHeat is essentially the level of movement of the atoms and molecules in something. The more they are agitated and move around, the greater their heat level. \n\nSo let's try talking about them with the word 'movement'.\n\n* \"Cold is the absence of movement\". Sounds okay. \n\n* \"Heat is the presence of movement\". Yeah, that's ok too.\n\nBut, change it around to stillness. \n\n* \"Cold is the presence of stillness.\" Meh. Bleh. Could be worse.\n\n* \"Heat is the absence of stillness\". No. Yeck. Really doesn't sound right. \n\nSo we go with the first reference because heat - essentially atomic-level movement - sounds better when said in that way, possibly because it's associated with an action rather than the lack of one.",
"Heat is a form of energy. If something is warm, it has more energy in it. If it is cold, it has less energy. It doesn't really make sense to say heat is the absence of cold because you are effectively saying that having energy is the lack of the lack of heat. Cold isn't actually something you can measure, we use the units for heat (J)."
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26,
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} | train_eli5 | Why do we say "cold doesnt exist - its the absence of heat"? Can I say it backwards? "Heat is the absence of cold"
| [
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24srxl | Who are the "famous" redditors, and why are they famous? | For example, I hear a lot about a person named Unidan, or way_fairer, or that one troll who got banned and it was a big deal. I would like to know more! | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They have a LOT of Karma, and normally make good comments.\n\nThey appear everywhere and they're normally at the top of the comments on the top posts on the front page.\n\nAnd as we all know, bitches dig karma = Famous."
],
"score": [
6
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} | {
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Who are the "famous" redditors, and why are they famous?
For example, I hear a lot about a person named Unidan, or way_fairer, or that one troll who got banned and it was a big deal. I would like to know more! | [
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10155n | Why do we get "sand" in the corners of our eyes when we sleep? And why do we not get it during the day when we're awake? | Just wondering, can someone help me out? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The \"sand\" is actually dried tears.\n\nThat is, tears are similar to salt water -- liquid with salts in them. Overnight, when the tears at the edges of your eyes dry, the salt is left behind as \"sand\".",
"To expand on what above said, the reason it doesn't happen we are awake is because we blink which spreads the \"tears\" around on our eyes, when we sleep they tend to build up in the corners of our eyes. But yes they're dried up salt water (and other stuff in tears)",
"If we didn't blink for a whole day (hypothetically) would you get \"sand\" all in or random parts of your eyes?"
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do we get "sand" in the corners of our eyes when we sleep? And why do we not get it during the day when we're awake?
Just wondering, can someone help me out? | [
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5nx04a | Does my breastmilk have healthier properties if I eat healthier food? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Regarding healthy and unhealthy fats:\ngenerally speaking: the membranes of your cells always feflect the stuff you eat. Of course the body has its own fattyacid metabolism and can contribute here. but regarding the fats the general rule applies: you are what you eat.\nOn the other hand: the milk you produce contains still certain healthy components eitherway. like omega3 fats that are important for the brain of the baby. Thats a propriety of breastmilk that should not be influenced by diet."
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} | train_eli5 | Does my breastmilk have healthier properties if I eat healthier food?
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3iwvat | What is a superdelegate? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A superdelegate is a high-ranking official of either the Democratic or the Republican party who is automatically seated to their respective conventions without having to be elected to participate. Usually, these are current or former holders of high-office (governors and US congresspeople / Senators) or high-ranking party officials.\n\nIn the context of the presidential primary election, these individuals are automatically seated and get a vote in determining which candidate the party will formally nominate for the general election under that party's banner. Unlike \"regular\" pledged delegates that are chosen in primary elections and are largely bound to support the candidate they represent, superdelegates are free to vote in their conscience, or for whom they personally believe would be in the best interest of the party as a whole. Because of this, there are many who believe that this gives undue influence to the establishment, and limits the will of the people as a whole to determine which candidate should be nominated - it is possible for one candidate to get a majority of pledged delegates from primary elections, yet lose the nomination if a sufficient number of superdelegates back a different candidate."
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} | train_eli5 | What is a superdelegate?
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tnf9a | If you jumped in a giant hole in the earth that was deep enough to reach the other side of the planet, what would happen to you? | Would you be crushed in the middle? hmm | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's say the earth is cold and there is no wind resistance that can heat you up. Also the earth is not spinning, this would result in you ricocheting of the walls. \n\nYou would accellerate all the way to the center of the earth, there you will be traveling at your fastest speed. When you are past the center you will slow down until you would peek up from the hole on the other side. Then you would do the same thing again but the other way. [This video will explain.](_URL_0_)",
"Let's assume your hole is a very nicely engineered tunnel, which dispenses with the obstacles of needing to have air to breath and needing to exist at pressures and temperatures approximating the atmosphere at sea level.\n\nYou'd accelerate at the speed of gravity for several minutes until you reached terminal velocity. You'd travel at that constant speed for quite some time until you reached the exact center of the planet. In the precise center, for a split second, you'd be completely unaffected by gravity because you'd be at the very center of the Earth's mass.\n\nMomentum would carry you through the core, and then gravity would begin to work against you, and your velocity would slow. Eventually, at some point before you reached the opposite surface of the planet, the pull of gravity would overcome your inertia, and you'd begin to fall back toward the center of the planet.\n\nThe process would reverse. You'd bob up and down in your tunnel, travelling a shorter and shorter distance on each pass, until eventually you'd reached weightless equilibrium in the core.",
"Wow, glad this old post of mine can be usefull again : _URL_1_",
"Well, it depends on how you set the problem up:\n\nIf you leave the air to just flow into your giant hole, then you might find you have a number of problems.\n\n- A lot of the atmosphere flows down into your hole.\n- The weight of all the air \"on top\" of the air in the middle of the Earth will generate enormous pressures.\n- As a result, you might have problems with the air solidifying around this region, blocking the hole.\n- Air resistance would also slow you down as you fall, and is quite complicated to calculate.\n\nGenerally, when people consider this \"classic problem\", they do so ignoring air. So let's assume you're constructed your hole with airlocks around both ends.\n\nYou might also have problems with the Earth rotating. Have you ever spun around on an office chair, and pulled your legs inwards to make yourself spin faster? It turns out that when you rotate around a point, if you move closer to that point you end up spinning faster (this is due to something called \"conservation of angular momentum\", if you're interested). So as soon as you start to fall down your hole in a rotating Earth, you'd start to rotate faster than the Earth itself, causing you to smack into the sides of your hole. Ouch! So let's assume the Earth isn't rotating.\n\n-------\n\nSo, to the problem (at last)! We've removed all possible factors that might influence our falling, so the only force at work here is the gravitational force. Gravity arises from mass, and as we fall through the Earth there is less and less mass \"underneath\" us. We only need consider the mass that is \"underneath us\", or inside a sphere that we are at the surface of - for example, when we are 100km from the centre of the Earth, we need only consider a sphere of mass of radius 100km. This is because the effect from all mass \"outside\" this sphere cancels out! This sphere gradually shrinks as we fall.\n\nSo, as we fall we accelerate, but the size of this acceleration (due to mass) gets smaller the closer we get to the middle of the Earth. Once we reach the middle, our speed is the fastest it's going to get, and the acceleration is zero.\n\nNow, there's an easy way to think about what happens next. The \"other side\" of the Earth is exactly the same as the side we just fell through, so the force it produces will be exactly the same, but in the opposite direction! For example, say at a particular point we are accelerating at 5 metres per second per second. At that same point on the opposite side of the Earth, we will be accelerating at -5 metres per second per second! The total result of this is that we end up stopping at exactly the same point we started from, on the other side of the Earth!\n\nNow, the whole process repeats. If we come to rest where we started on the other side, then we'll simply start falling again, and repeat the fall we just had. This repeats over and over again, forever, unless we stop ourselves.",
"Barring rotation etc... You're essentially talking about falling down a tube through a stationary earth sized planet with no way to go anywhere but straight down and no outside forces to mess with you. Well towards the center the pressure would kill you at some point, you'll heat up, and your remains will eventually begin penduluming back and forth as you reach peak speed at the center and slow as you get further away.\n\ntl;dr: You die."
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} | train_eli5 | If you jumped in a giant hole in the earth that was deep enough to reach the other side of the planet, what would happen to you?
Would you be crushed in the middle? hmm | [
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267enw | what is "Tilt table test" | what is "Tilt table test", why is it done, what are the conclusions doctors get from it.(Have already read the wikipedia entry) | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When people stand up, their blood pressure often goes down (because the blood moves down more into their legs).\n\nWhen this happens, in most people your body senses the drop in pressure and compensates by increasing your heart rate and constricting your blood vessels using whats called your autonomic nervous system. \n\nIf people have trouble with this system, or can't compensate, they can often have a big drop in blood pressure when they stand up, which can lead to fainting (people without this problem have a similar thing if they stand up suddenly and feel light headed - that what the start of fainting feels like). \n\nThe tilt table simulates standing up by gradually tilting upwards from flat to straight. In this way the patient can be safely observed without the risk of them fainting, and under controlled conditions. \n\nDoes that answer your question?",
"You get put on a table and tilted so that your head is down and legs are up, and vice versa. \n\nIts used most commonly to diagnose cardiovascular (heart) problems"
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} | train_eli5 | what is "Tilt table test"
what is "Tilt table test", why is it done, what are the conclusions doctors get from it.(Have already read the wikipedia entry) | [
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33sh74 | When a woman gets pregnant, the present "physiological status" of the parents affect the baby? [read the text] | For example:
Guy A and Woman A are physically healthy and are 24 years old, W(A) gets pregnant, and a 'normal' baby comes out.
Guy A, after a year, gets a leg blown off in the army, and they decide to have another baby when he gets better. The fact that a parent doesn't have a leg anymore somehow affects the information on the sperm?
The same question with anything that happens to the body: Organs removed, spinal damage, brain stroke, gunshots.... Does anything that the human body suffers before the pregnancy affects somehow the future development of the baby?
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"If the damage doesn't affect either parent's DNA or the baby in the womb (like if mom has a stroke while pregnant) damage to the parents won't affect the baby. For example if your left leg is blown off in an explosion your genes still have the code to grow a left leg - it's just not there anymore. When you have a child, they will grow a left leg like normal even though you don't have one because the genes you passed down to them still have those instructions. \n\nThere are some experiences parents and even grandparents have that can change how their genes are expressed, but don't actually change their DNA code. This change happens through epigenetics, which is basically how your body chooses to turn a gene on or off. For example, if your grandparents lived through a famine (which is very possible if they lived during the great depression) their experience with hunger may have turned some genes on or off through epigenetics. This change was passed down to your parents, and ultimately you.",
"> Guy A, after a year, gets a leg blown off in the army, and they decide to have another baby when he gets better. The fact that a parent doesn't have a leg anymore somehow affects the information on the sperm?\n\nIn the 1800s, when our modern understanding of inheritance was still under construction, one hypothesis was essentially this: the *heritability of acquired characteristics,* which is also named [Lamarckism](_URL_0_), after a French scientist who articulated the idea (as part of a broader theory of evolution) in the early part of the century.\n\nIt's almost completely wrong. The overwhelming majority of inheritance isn't affected by accidents or injuries, it comes down to DNA, and your DNA doesn't get rewritten, just because you broke your leg. (Mostly. Like some other commenters have pointed out, some events, like famine, can cause parts of your DNA to be, not rewritten, but highlighted or commented out, in a way that can persist for several generations.)",
"> The fact that a parent doesn't have a leg anymore somehow affects the information on the sperm?\n\nNo. The father still has all the DNA necessary to create two legs. Physical injuries like that don't mutate your DNA.\n\n > Does anything that the human body suffers before the pregnancy affects somehow the future development of the baby?\n\nSomething like radiation damage to the sperm/eggs could have an affect. But not normal, physical injuries."
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} | train_eli5 | When a woman gets pregnant, the present "physiological status" of the parents affect the baby? [read the text]
For example: Guy A and Woman A are physically healthy and are 24 years old, W(A) gets pregnant, and a 'normal' baby comes out. Guy A, after a year, gets a leg blown off in the army, and they decide to have another baby when he gets better. The fact that a parent doesn't have a leg anymore somehow affects the information on the sperm? The same question with anything that happens to the body: Organs removed, spinal damage, brain stroke, gunshots.... Does anything that the human body suffers before the pregnancy affects somehow the future development of the baby? | [
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26h7kd | Why do bubbles appear at the heated area of a boiling kettle? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All matter can have three states: solid, liquid, and gas. Normally we see water as a liquid. When water is heated above 100 degrees C (at sea level), it becomes a gas. This requires a lot of energy to turn the liquid (which is a lower energy state) into a gas (steam). \n\nEnergy comes in many different forms. The one that we care about is thermal energy, which in layman's terms is 'heat'. \n\nThe bubbles you see are actually little pockets of steam (gas phase water) rising from the interface between the metal (which is where the energy is being transferred to the water) and the water. The heated area has the most bubbles because that's where the energy is being added."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do bubbles appear at the heated area of a boiling kettle?
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36rn4a | Have there ever been attacks on the black cube (Kaaba) in Mecca? It just seems like a bad idea to gather so many followers of one religion in such a small area. Is there a no-fly zone above Mecca? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not since 1979.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIs you are an Islamic terrorist groups, seizing Mecca and killing so many Muslims is the exact thing to do if you want to unite both the Western Powers and the the Islamic nations against you.",
"Can't link because I'm on mobile, but it looks like the Kaaba was attacked during a riot in Mecca in '87."
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2g3sbm | How do Democrats and Republicans rationalize billions of dollars in tax breaks every year to oil companies? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Without commenting on the merits of the argument or where I personally stand on this, the argument goes roughly like this:\n\n- Cheap energy is the cornerstone of a healthy economy.\n- Provide access to national lands and/or tax reduction for exploration and drilling in the US.\n- The more oil we get domestically, the less we have to import from dictatorial sewers like most of the Middle East and Venezuela.\n- The less we are dependent upon foreign oil, the more secure our nation will be.\n\nEDIT: Well I'll be hornswoggled. Gilded yet again. Thank ye kind stranger(s).",
"Because the overwhelming majority of tax breaks that they take advantage of are not specific to their industries. For example: \n\n\"Section 199 is part of the domestic production activities deduction that was included in the American Job Creation Act of 2004, which passed with strong bipartisan support, especially in the Senate. It currently provides a 9% tax deduction from net income for businesses engaged in \"qualified production activities\" in the U.S. Those activities include manufacturing a product, selling, leasing or licensing it, and engineering and software activities related to that production. The deduction was intended to encourage domestic manufacturing, and in the hope that the tax break could provide a slight competitive advantage against foreign competition.\n\nThe oil and gas industry, especially in its extracting and refining, is heavily involved in U.S. manufacturing. Congress already penalizes the industry by only giving it a 6% deduction, rather than the 9% that other industries receive.\"\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nThere's more at the article, but a big thing to remember is that when you vote for new corporate tax loopholes to go towards things like industrial productivity, you're opening yourself up to people complaining about how you \"Gave millions in tax breaks to the oil industry\", though they won't mention that those same breaks go to their own favored industry, like auto manufacturers. \n\n**5-year-old version**: Just because your best friend brought in cupcakes for everyone in class, and even gave one to the kid that you really hate, doesn't mean that he really likes that one kid and hates you.",
"How about the fact that oil companies pay the highest taxes among any corporations in the United States?\n\nExxon has produced $118 billion in net income the last three years. They've paid $86 billion in income taxes during that time.\n\nChevron has produced $74 billion in net income the last three years. They've paid $54 billion in income taxes during that time.\n\nThese companies are paying 40% corporate income tax rates and are the largest corporate tax payers in the world.",
"Most of the tax breaks for oil companies have to deal with exploration and drilling (finding the oil and getting to it) and not with the actual selling of the oil. The oil industry is, by its very nature, a very risky place. Let's say it cost 5 billion dollars to drill and start pumping a new well in the Gulf of Mexico that is PROJECTED to produce 10 billion dollars of oil (in our world, oil company production and selling is taxed at a 20% rate so our oil company will get 8 billion dollars back while the government gets 2 billion dollars). Now say the licensing fees and other taxes associated with physical drilling (not the selling) are a total of 1 billion dollars. Now this hikes the total price up to 6 billion dollars that our oil has to shell out before it sees a lick of profit. Our company might think that spending 6 billion to MAYBE make 8 billion isn't a risk worth taking, so they scrap the whole project. Now, instead of the government making 3 billion dollars in taxes it makes 0 dollars. So, what the government decides to do is give a tax break on the initial 1 billion dollar tax. Since the project now only cost 5 billion dollars, our company sees I'd as an acceptable risk and OKs the project. As a result, the government now makes 2 billion dollars more than it would have previously (or if the project fails, the government doesn't gain or lose anything). Not only do these tax breaks end up generating more money for the governemnt over all, they create job, lower energy prices, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil. All parties involved benefit, though since the oil companies usually benefit more directly alot people see it as unjustifiable. \n\nFYI: Real life tax codes and oil projections are much more complicated but this example has the general gist.",
"The fact is that, as much as Americans like to complain about oil companies, we oftentimes overlook the fact that they are supplying us with an essential commodity for a far cheaper price than almost anywhere else in the world. \n\nIf tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies ended, they would just end up charging more for the oil, thereby raising gas prices to a level that would significantly hurt our economy and put even more financial stress on your average American worker. Before you complain about oil companies and the treatment they receive, realize that the alternative is a massive increase in gas prices.",
"This is what ELI5 has become? Thinly veiled political commentary?",
"There are no tax breaks for oil and gas in the US.\n\nCorporate tax code is incredibly convoluted. Oil and Gas are very large companies, and therefore able to spend big money finding all the nooks and crannies in the tax law in order to meet the obligations required for lots and lots of various tax incentives.\n\nALL of these incentives are available for every business in the country or in certain categories. These areas are extremely broad, such as agriculture or manufacturing. There is not a single specific oil/gas tax break, in fact, they are often prohibited from taking full advantage of some breaks.\n\nEssentially what people say when they want the 'tax breaks' taken from the oil companies, means they want a separate tax code written just for them to force them to pay the full 35% corporate tax rate as a flat tax without deductions. This doesn't fly in America for obvious reasons, we really don't like some people getting special treatment and others getting targeted. Even when you don't like them.,",
"Oil subsidies are one of the main reasons that fuel is so cheap in the United States, relative to everywhere else. There are arguments for and against keeping the cost of fuel artificially cheap, but the simple fact is that unless you personally are willing to pay European gas prices at the pump, fuel subsidies are here to stay.",
"Here is the Wall Street Journal's take on it, at least with regard to a couple of the tax breaks energy companies get. In relevant part it states:\n\n*Section 199 is part of the domestic production activities deduction that was included in the American Job Creation Act of 2004, which passed with strong bipartisan support, especially in the Senate. It currently provides a 9% tax deduction from net income for businesses engaged in \"qualified production activities\" in the U.S. Those activities include manufacturing a product, selling, leasing or licensing it, and engineering and software activities related to that production. The deduction was intended to encourage domestic manufacturing, and in the hope that the tax break could provide a slight competitive advantage against foreign competition.*\n\n*The oil and gas industry, especially in its extracting and refining, is heavily involved in U.S. manufacturing. Congress already penalizes the industry by only giving it a 6% deduction, rather than the 9% that other industries receive.*\n\n*But whatever the percentage allowed, this isn't a special deduction for oil and gas. Many other manufacturing industries—including farm equipment, appliances and pharmaceuticals—take the deduction. Mr. Van Hollen's bill refers to the disqualification of two industries from these benefits as a \"Special Rule for Certain Oil and Gas Companies.\" In terms of fairness, it's like telling oil company workers that they can't take the home-mortgage deduction anymore because they work for politically targeted companies.*\n\n*Mr. Van Hollen also draws a bead on the last-in, first-out accounting method known as Lifo. Those who had accounting classes will recall that there are several widely accepted ways to value a company's inventory. Lifo is one of them. It assumes that the last inventory in is the first used, sold or distributed—an accounting method often used by commodity-type industries. Mr. Van Hollen proposes to reduce those inventory options available to the oil and gas industry, even though they are, and will remain, widely available to most U.S. companies.*\n\n*Critics of the industry claim that there are other ways of appraising oil and gas inventory that would result in a higher value, and thus companies would have to pay more taxes. But that's like offering individuals the choice of taking the standard deduction or itemizing on their returns, and then demonizing a subset of people who choose the approach that minimizes their income tax obligation.*\n\nFull article here: _URL_2_\n\nEdit: here's another article briefly summarizing the types of deductions available and why they exist. Again, not saying they are good or bad, just answering the question OP asked. _URL_2_",
"[Barton: Govt Subsidies Necessary To Keep Exxon From Going Out Of Business](_URL_3_)",
"This doesn't directly explain the question because I the OP has a different kind of \"oil company\" in mind than the ones that actually see tax breaks. It's not really the Exxons and BPs of the world that get tax breaks. If anything, these companies are generally penalized (explained further below). Small partnership structures that collect royalties on oil wells are the ones who get temporary tax breaks because they are allowed to deplete (expense) the cost of oil produced in excess of the amount they actually paid for the well. This is a temporary difference because when the company disposes of the oil well, they will have tax gain on the excess depletion expense they took in prior years.\n\nFor the most part the big oil companies do not have industry specific tax breaks. As many people have mentioned below, one of the biggest tax breaks, the Sec. 199 Domestic Production Activities Deduction (DPAD), is designed to encourage employment of US workers in all industries. Oil companies get effectively 2/3 of the deduction that other industries get.\n\nI pulled the 10ks for two random Fortune 500 companies, Exxon and Apple. In 2011, 2012, and 2013 Exxon's effective tax rate (ETR) is roughly, 42%, 39%, and 42%. Apple's ETR is 24%, 25% and 36%. I believe Apple's tax expense is lower largely due to their ability to claim that a large portion of their income was created by activities overseas.\n\nOn a side note, the DPAD deduction for employing US workers also serves to reduce companies abilities to source income over seas (as Burger Kind is attempting to do). The rules that determine in what locale income was created (and therefore who can tax it) are largely dependent upon where it was produced. If you're taking advantage of the DPAD deduction, that means a lot of your income must be sourced to the US.\n\nSource: Big 4 CPA who works in Texas on large oil and gas returns.\n\nTLDR: The tax breaks largely go to high net-worth individuals who just own a partnership's share in oil wells. Not to the huge multinationals.",
"the same reason every other company gets tax breaks. There are no \"special\" breaks for the oil business, in fact they get taxes much more than most others. \n\n\nThey take advantage of tax write-offs, carry forwards, etc. just like everybody else.",
"The simplest answer is that the idea that oil companies are given special tax breaks is mostly inaccurate. All companies are allowed to deduct the various costs of doing business from their revenue to determine their taxable income and oil companies are no different (see non-oil companies like GE that actually get tax refunds every year on billions in revenue). An oil company deducting its exploration and drilling costs is no different than a medical company deducting research and development or marketing costs (remember - only profits are taxed). The only real tax benefit that energy companies get is the ability to use a MLP (master limited partnership) structure in which the net earnings (revenue - expenses) from the LP entity flow through to the parent company (similar to a dividend) untaxed and the parent company is then taxed on the income (unlike normal dividends which are double taxed). However even the MLP is subject to restrictions on its use.",
"it doesn't matter if they get them or not ....you will still pay the same for a gallon of gas. The only person that \"pays\" for anything is the consumer. Everyone else just passes the cost along.",
"Look, you don't know about capitalism like our politicians. Do you want our oil to be \"Made in China\"??? [Let our Congressman Barton explain free market capitalism to you.](_URL_4_)",
"For those of you who don't know the big oil companies (Chevron, Exxon, etc.) actually pay some of the highest effective tax rates in the world. Chevron pays an effective rate of 43%, Exxon 39% and Conoco Phillips pays 51.5% (source: _URL_5_) \n\nThat doesn't mean corporate welfare isn't wrong and incompatible with a true free capitalist society but it's definitely something to keep in mind rather than blindly assuming they all pay off the politicians to the point where they pay nothing in taxes.",
"If they didn't support corporate welfare, the corporations would stop handing them campaign contributions, and they'd be out of a job. Sounds pretty clear-cut to me.",
"Alaskan here. The quick and dirty answer is that most of the easy oil has been found. To find and extract new sources of oil is going to take billions of dollars. Shell has already spend $1 billion dollars up here on an offshore project that didn't produce anything but they're going to try again. Conoco Phillips is also looking to expand operations thanks to tax breaks. \n\nBeing a liberal I'm usually highly suspicious of tax breaks like these, but being able to see firsthand the amount of investment required to get the oil opens your eyes a bit.",
"It is not the government's money. It is the oil companies money. They got the oil out of the ground, they refined the oil, and they distributed the oil. Yes, the company pay some taxes but as long as they stay within the laws they are ok.\n\nBy the way, the govt should take less from people and companies who made it, govt should get the heck out of the way and quit stealing money.",
"Republicans say it keeps energy costs down (which is debatable).\n\nDemocrats wanted to end them and talk about it whenever budget issues are brought up.\n\nIIRC, Obama proposed using the money to reduce the taxes we pay at the pump, but the idea went no where in Congress.",
"You ask that question while working under the assumption that our federal representatives are voted into office with votes from the general public, when they are actually voted into office with special interests money, back door deals, media that lies about the lies they're lying about, and the occasional endorsement from a sitting member of Congress or a president.",
"Very silly, charged replies on this one...\n\nLet's consider economics instead of partisan politics and campaign contributions, you goofballs. This is about maintaining status quo. As demand continues to rise, oil companies need to keep up, meaning they need to spend more in order to meet that demand. Naturally, this would lead to HIGHER GAS PRICES. If this was allowed, then the markets would push into new energy alternatives since eventually it would become cheaper to invest in new things than continue searching for more oil. That is how markets naturally evolve away from scarce resources.\n\nAnyway, the tax breaks are there to, again, maintain the status quo which allows gas prices to remain pretty low. Compared to an average American's purchasing power, gasoline is pretty darn cheap. Without the tax breaks, prices would go up and there would be serious public upheaval. Debate the correctness of this policy all you want - but it's bad politics to allow gas prices to go up because people somehow assume it's the government's responsibility to keep them low. This directly conflicts with the market's willingingness investment in alternative energy. Anyway, that debate is for another day, but hopefully this answers your question.",
"Oil exploration costs a LOT of money. Companies spend many years and billions of dollars in the *hope* that they will find a large oil deposit. Much of the time, years are spent surveying and digging only to be left with nothing. Beyond that, the price of actually getting that oil from the Earth to your nearest refinery is heinous. Without subsidies to the oil companies, we would be producing far less domestically and paying a hell of a lot more per gallon.",
"Well Oil companies provide us with the one resource that basically keeps us alive and our economy alive and at this time is the most valuable resource in the world and does it for a 6% profit.\n\nConversely Soda companies do nothing but make us fat and unhealthy and they make a 14% profit.",
"Probably because like it or not, with probably less than a dozen or so exceptions, petroleum based energy and/or products are something that every single person in America uses.",
"Their rational is that it keeps the prices from becoming inflated and/or helps keep these companies from laying off employees.\n\nBut both of those outcomes happen anyways.",
"They provide jobs for thousands of people who need them and they provide domestic oil sources so we don't have to fight wars over oil.",
"If we didn't give them tax breaks how much more would refilling my gas tank cost?",
"By voters asking them to \"create jobs\" and manage economic downturns.",
"It helps \"grease the wheels\" for campaign contributions.",
"Seems like most comments attempt to explain how the tax breaks function or simply say Americans couldn't handle the costs of energy without them. I don't think the tax breaks can be explained rationally, and I think that Americans would stills manage without the them. However, I'm also not of the opinion, as many are, that the sole justification is some sly collusion between oil execs and corrupt politicians. The truth is that energy is a highly elastic good, meaning that the demand for it doesn't fluctuate dramatically with price. Most people won't stop driving, using electricity, or heating their house because of fuel prices, but they will be angry about it. Come election time, politicians are awarded with every success and failure, luxury and hardship of every voter in the country. In essence, politicians are held liable for high energy prices, not the energy companies. The result is legislative body willing to give energy companies an arm and a leg in an effort to lower energy costs. In practice, the energy companies tend to take a large percentage of the breaks as profits, rather than reducing prices. The joys of capitalism and democracy.",
"Selective industry subsidies are used to enable politicians to control certain industries. Companies over time rely on them and if they do something not to the liking of congress, they can simply threaten to take them away to motivate them. Oil subsidies are not as much as you think. The Environmental Law Institute in 2009 determined that $72 Billion was spent between 2002 and 2008 on fossil fuel subsidies and $29 Billion on alternative fuel subsidies over that time. That is $10B and $4B per year respectively. [SOURCE](_URL_6_). For scale the budget in 2008 was $2.9 Trillion. The reason fossil fuels are cheaper in the US if we don't tack on enormous taxes like they do in Europe, there are plenty of countries that spend very little on fuel subsidies are get it cheaper than the US.",
"As there has already been rationals for it. I thought I'd post some of the criticisms. \n\n\n- Oil Companies are of the most profitable in the country. It's not rational to think that without the tax breaks and subsidies that they would close up shop and choose to just not make money. \n\n- Many of the corporations are sitting on drilling rights that they aren't using, just parking on the land to prevent other businesses from engaging on it.\n\n- That money could be better served investing in renewable/green energy. Industries that would actually benefit from the money. \n\n- Doubling down on investing in oil breeds dependency on an already diminishing resource. That such dependency makes it more difficult to break away from oil and gas.",
"They don't need to be approved every year, that's how. \n\nThey are old tax breaks - some a century old - already permanently in the tax code, just as solidly permanent as each year's mortgage deduction is. It doesn't come up for a vote any more. So it is not up to congress each year to approve them. \n\nDemocrats do try to but till we have another Democratic majority House/super-majority Senate and President to sign it, we can't do it.\n\nPelosi tried it: got $40 billion in oil & gas tax breaks out of the permanent tax code in the first bills through the House, but Franken (#60 Senator) couldn't get seated in time so Senate Republicans prevented a vote.",
"◾The more oil we get domestically, the less we have to import from dictatorial sewers like most of the Middle East and Venezuela.\n◾The less we are dependent upon foreign oil, the more secure our nation will be.\n I disagree. Oil, is a commodity and sold on the open market. Oil that is extracted from American soil does not necessarily stay here. It is sold on the open market to whom ever will buy it. America is producing more oil now which is putting pressure on prices as there is now more oil on the market. \nIt's all about supply and demand. If China wanted to buy 100% of the oil produced by America they could.",
"Not the proper forum but I want to ask you OP, where do you get the idea that they actually do rationalize these billions in tax breaks? Or, where can you point to signs of them having to defend such systems publicly? \n\nI'm not calling you out, it's just that so many fundamental problems in the US are seemingly \"just there\", ongoing, impossible-to-pin-down-the-blame-for, morasses of wastefulness. \n\nIt's specifically these huge issues that go un-rationalized, undefended, unchecked because both parties are on board. There are countless other examples, but a good guide is if you don't hear much about it, it's a problem with significant contributions from both political parties.",
"Well, its quite simple: Cheap energy is necessary for a good industrial economy, for a happy population, and for communication. Oil companies provide it, but in order to keep the prices down they need to keep their profits up in order to keep expanding to find more oil. Its the easiest way to keep our economy afloat and for us to continue being a international superpower, but is by no means the best way.\n\nHonestly, the better question here is \"How does Congress rationalize spending money on tax breaks for oil companies that could be spent on creating more solar, wind, and hydro plants?\"",
"Other than the obvious reasons (oil companies are huge so as a % of their revenue, the tax breaks aren't that significant, wanting to subsidize energy production):\n\n1) Other countries give tax breaks to their oil companies. We want our oil companies to be able to compete with foreign companies on a level footing, so we give them similar breaks.\n\n2) As easy-to-access oil runs low, oil companies have to get creative with how to produce more oil. However, these new methods are risky and untried, so the tax breaks act as kind of a cushion to encourage development of these new techniques.",
"Consider this, once elected to office no matter which party a person represents, no matter how good their intentions, a politician's main goal becomes staying in office. To stay in office they need money for campaigns and the easiest way to get those funds for campaigns is through contributions which come with an unstated or sometimes overly stated understanding that said politician will return the favor when votes on tax breaks are presented. This goes for oil as well as any/every other industry. US politicians' number one priority is holding that office.",
"If you're talking about [the $70 billion dollars in subsidies](_URL_7_) summarized in that article than it may be simplest to just tell you that we don't give nearly that much in subsidies. \n\nIn that piece they add many standard accounting principles that companies normally use and call them tax breaks. They also overstate the amounts that their sources claim. \n\nSome of those subsidies are true. The manufacturing subsidy of $1.8 billion per year is one. The rational is \"more jobs\", whether that is the best course of action is debatable.",
"Ok so let me start by saying I'm a Rockefeller Republican. The best of both worlds.\n\nCorporate tax breaks are actually meant for innovation and R & D. Those giant breakthroughs in technology that pop up? Most companies won't take the giant financial risk without some sort of immediate guaranteed incentive (the tax break money). The long term benefit can be profit from whatever the develop, but it's still a risk. \n\nOverall, the idea is that if they have the money they'll stimulate job growth and advances in their fields.",
"Every subsity has basically the same argument. You have a company that pays taxes, and all of the employees that also pay taxes and they pay taxes on everything they buy. The general math is the subsity is less than the total amount of taxes that they take in from every aspect of the business. Oil has that and the benefits of low oil prices on the entire economy.",
"Just like they rationalize the gazillions they GIVE to any other number of companies?\n\nTax breaks are different from outright subsidies (which they do give to other industries/companies). But making it a bit easier for oil-based energy companies to do business actually benefits the economy, the citizenry, and even our national security more so than a lot of \"crony capitalism\" stuff the government does.",
"It's simple, oil companies donate large sums of money to the campaigns of both Democrats AND Republicans. Oil companies also donate large sums of money to any incumbent's challenger who isn't pro-oil. Thus, the people making the tax rule-Democratic and Republican politicians- are beholden to the oil companies. The oil companies get what they want: more money through the guise of tax breaks.",
"Easy. Oil companies need to make an amount of money in order for it to be worth extracting oil. The cost of extraction has increased so in order for them to continue extracting oil it needs to produce more revenue. The government is providing the subsidy to keep the price down for the end user, thereby socializing the cost of energy.",
"I don't understand why people don't also mention that the majority owners of these oil companies are typically held in 401k and pensions aka the common man's retirement. Tax then more you make it harder for us middle income Americans to grow our retirement accounts. Substitute oil companies for large banks Wal-Mart or McDonald's.",
"The so called \"tax breaks\" are the same tax breaks that any industry receives to write off certain costs. Farms can write off the costs of tractors, wind farms receive write offs for the turbines (not to mention huge out right subsidies), and oil companies get write offs for their costs as well.",
"They don't have to. The US government has 0 accountability. I'm amazed that people continue to vote for representatives when there is no representing going on. \n\nStop voting people! Vote for issues, but not for people. It's the only way anything will ever change. This is 2014, representatives are no longer needed.",
"Oil companies do not operate in a perfectly competitive market for a variety of reasons. Instead, it looks a lot like a monopoly. Without subsidies, a monopoly will not produce the optimal \"equilibrium\" value of a good for the market. Direct subsidy would surely be even less popular than indirect tax breaks.",
"Hi there.\nI think your premise is a bit faulty. You are assuming that politicians are trying to rationalize this.\n\nThey are not.\n\nWe do that for them every time we fill up the tank.",
"They don't bother to rationalize, they just vote to give their fat cat buddies a tax break and collect their corruption money.",
"> Don't post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view. \n\nHow the fuck is this post still here?",
"By the way, oil companies pay more money in taxes in the United states then every other company types combined",
"Its easy to rationalize anything when you don't have a conscience and view the general population as beneath you",
"With the fat checks filling their wallets when they get paid for pushing forward that legislation.",
"The same way they justify calling a reduction in the overall baseline budgeting increase a \"cut\"."
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"http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324789504578380684292877300?mobile=y",
"http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/breaking-it-down-oil-industry-tax-breaks-20110512",
"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/barton-govt-subsidies-necessary-to-keep-exxon-from-going-out-of-business",
"http://video-cdn.abcnews.com/110309_pol_barton_karl2.mp4",
"http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45kghl/1-exxon-mobil/",
"http://www.eli.org/sites/default/files/eli-pubs/d19_07.pdf",
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} | train_eli5 | How do Democrats and Republicans rationalize billions of dollars in tax breaks every year to oil companies?
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3qizea | What is the evolutionary benefit or reason for the Tyrannosaurus' small arms? How did it succeed as a predator with this shortcoming? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's very unusual for a body part to evolve away completely. All land vertebrates are tetrapods - this means they have four limbs and a head. The only vertebrate I'm aware of to have completely broken that is the snake - other than that, everything has four limbs (although the rear legs fused in marine mammals like seals and whales). \n\nSo in all likelihood, the evolutionary benefit for the small arms was merely that the tyrannosaurus didn't have to waste so much energy and food growing them in the first place. It's the equivalent of cave mice being blind but still having eye sockets - it's a vestigial remnant of a more-or-less unneeded body part.",
"The thing about evolution is its not about what makes you better, it's about what makes you worse. The small arms weren't killing them off, there wasn't a trex like critter with long arms doing better at surviving, it's not like short arms ment easy food, evolution is about your ability to make babies. If having short arms didn't stop that from happening, trex gonna have sex and trex have short arms.",
"There are a few theories for the Tyrannosaurus' small arms and the functions that they served. But first it must be asked, why did they get so small in the first place? Evolution doesn't have a goal in mind. Its completely random. However some mutations might benefit an animal to the point that those traits become dominant, and others might not get in the way enough for them to disappear. It's likely a combination of the two for the T-rex. Mutations that shortened the T-rex's arms simply weren't detrimental enough for the trait to disappear and instead it became dominant. Why did it become dominant? Well we dont know. Maybe all the other T-rex's were killed off and only the one that randomly had short arms survived. Maybe the mutation that brought about short arms came with other genetic benefits (like maybe bigger jaws). But most likely it was simply more efficient. If you aren't using your arms, but are wasting energy to pump blood to them, then they are more of a hinderance than a benefit. The T-Rex may not have needed its arms to be a successful hunter, its legs, tail, and giant head were enough. But then why keep them at all? Well there are a, as I said earlier, few functions that they may have served.\n\n1) they could have helped it grip the female during mating\n\n2) they could have helped the T-Rex right itself if it fell over.\n\n3) they were just long enough to allow it to grip onto prey before it delivered a killing bite."
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} | train_eli5 | What is the evolutionary benefit or reason for the Tyrannosaurus' small arms? How did it succeed as a predator with this shortcoming?
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k4ccw | For Profit Prisons | How do they work? Is it entirely private, or does the government still cover some of the costs? Why are some prisons privatized while others aren't? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lets say the Townsville government is looking at it's budget - it's spending $50 Million a year on prisons! Well, ACME Prisons, Inc. comes to the Townsville treasure and says: \n\n \"Listen - pay us $40 Million and we will take care of the prisons\"\n\nIt makes complete sense financially to outsource this - they claim to offer the same or higher capacity prisons for a cheaper price.\n\nSince the prison is now privatized, it will be run like any business - budget cuts, stuffing more people into each room because they can having more prisoners yields a higher profit for ACME Prisons, Inc. Many times this leads to worse conditions.\n\nThe government covers all the costs; not every government has hired a company to take care of prisons for them, however.",
"Not a complete answer here but the local governments still cover all the costs in the sense that they are the prison's customers. The theory is that a private prison can do the same thing more efficiently than the state or city running it. Debatable whether that's true but that's another topic.",
"If prisons are run as private companies, does that mean that prisoners can sue them (and the state) at any time for failing to provide adequate safety/etc?",
"It's great to see a discussion about this. It's all too easy to write off prisoners as 'dealt with' and not give any more thoughts to them once they're sentenced.",
"Also, of note. Most of the prisons are still run by the state.",
"You have detention at your school, right little Johnny? Well, imagine if instead of going to detention at your school when you're bad, you have to do to detention somewhere else, where someone who has nothing to do with your school runs the detention. Instead of having to pay attention to and watch you at your school, they send you there and pay those people to watch you instead. The people who are watching you now, outside of school, want you to stay there as long as possible, because your school will have to keep paying them to keep you there.\n\nThose same people who are now watching you outside of school are really good friends with the principals and teachers, so they will give some money to the principal for every bad student that they send away. This way, they'll have all the money they ever need.\n\n For the non-five-year-old:\n Outside of school detention = privatized prison\n Principals and teachers = judges, lawmakers, and LEOs \n School detention = state-run prison",
"I do know that Private, for profit prisons, always seem to have their prisons in a much more horrendous conditions than government prisons. This mainly due to Private prisons not being upheld to government standards as much.",
"A slight niggle, but they are not intended to be \"for-profit\", they just end up that way. Private and \"for-profit\" are not necessarily the same thing."
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} | train_eli5 | For Profit Prisons
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3hukc3 | Why Operating Systems are architecture specific (ex. X86 , ARM) but applications are not. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Applications are architecture specific. It's just that you mostly use AMD64 (or x86_64) CPUs with fitting OS and then run x86 applications. Like the name suggests, x86_64 is just an extension of x86 and x86_64 is backwards compatible. \n\nYou just can't mix both in one application. That's why your Windows has a System32 directory and SysWOW64 directory. The 32bit stuff is in the latter, the 64bit stuff in the former. (thanks /u/AdarTan)\n\nAn ARM application simply wouldn't run on the x86 architecture. At least not a native applications which is why Java or .Net applications run on everything that has Java or .Net. The Application itself is not compiled (translation from source code that humans can read and write to 1s and 0s) for Windows or AMD64 but for the Java Virtual Machine (and whatever Microsoft calls their .Net stuff) which is a virtual machine that then runs your application with code for your platform (CPU architecture and OS).",
"Applications are, unless they are compiled at runtime (Java, JavaScript, etc) in which case they are universal because they are turned into machine code for that processor as they are run.\n\nThis is why the SysWOW64 directory exists in Windows."
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} | train_eli5 | Why Operating Systems are architecture specific (ex. X86 , ARM) but applications are not.
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3mzxzf | How did we discover math? | Math is so complicated, everyone can agree with that. But where did it come from? There was a time when we didn't know any of it, how did we learn Multiplication, Algebra, Etc? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Math is so pure and simple, facts are facts and concrete rules define all the relationships. Only Barbie thinks \"Math is Hard\", but her head is full of hair.\n\nCounting started before written history, systematic numbers were defined by the Sumerians, number place was invented by the Babylonians. More kinds of math were invented when the math we had couldn't do the problems we were studying. One of the last huge steps was Calculus. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently invented calculus in the mid-17th century.\n\nEven today we're looking for new ways to explain and teach math. A lot of discussion recently has examined the Common Core Math approach in comparison to the previous technique (which was called New Math back in the 1960s)."
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} | train_eli5 | How did we discover math?
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49ve0f | Why is tap dancing so ubiquitous in old musicals? | Singin' in the Rain, Swing Time, Stormy Weather, For Me and My Gal, etc. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Movies were still close to their live theater roots at that time, a genre where microphones could not be used.\n\nTo entertain a large theater, you spoke loudly, sang loudly, and when possible, danced loudly.",
"They were made by people from an era where dancing was public performance. Half the actors in old musicals are Broadway stars. When you do live entertainment, you'd better know how to do pretty much everything, because there are no Cuts retakes splices and post-production."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why is tap dancing so ubiquitous in old musicals?
Singin' in the Rain, Swing Time, Stormy Weather, For Me and My Gal, etc. | [
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2r8hur | when you hyperventilate, why do your hands and face (and other parts) go numb? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, I'm no doctor, and I didn't look it up real fast so this is just what I think:\n\nHyperventilating makes you breathe faster, making oxygen travel quicker out, right? So maybe the 'numbness' is less oxygen in your body?\n\nJust how I see it, not actually what it may be."
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} | train_eli5 | when you hyperventilate, why do your hands and face (and other parts) go numb?
| [
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1annvd | Why is growth so important to an economy? | Fairly straightforward question, brought about by the lead-up to the budget announcement in the UK today, and all the commentators are saying that there's not been enough growth, but I have no idea why the economy needs to grow.
I understand it doesn't want to shrink, but can't it stay the same? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For one thing, the population is growing. If the economy can't keep up than the overall wealth creation will be going down relative to any one person. There is also new industry, new technology and so there's always new things to demand. If a country is not growing than new workers will not have jobs and new products will not be made in that country (and people will not have extra money to buy the extra things).",
"The economy never really stays the same, even if it's not growing. For example, when you hear that there were 20,000 new jobs created last month, what that means is that there were 20,000 more people who got jobs than lost jobs. But it might be the case that 150,000 people lost their jobs, and 170.000 people found new jobs. \n\nSo the economy is always moving about, since when we talk about \"the economy\" we're really talking about all the things people are doing with their lives in respect to working, shopping, travelling, etc. Since people's lives keep changing, we want those changes to be for the better. When the economy is said to be growing, it means that we are seeing people do more with their lives, which is generally a good thing. When it's shrinking, that means less fulfilling lives for people and more hardship. When it's neither growing nor shrinking, that means that on average, people are about the same. But of course not everyone is average, so some people will be doing better, and some will be doing worse.\n\nAnd as others have mentioned, population keeps growing, so if the economy grows slower than the population, it means on average people are doing less stuff per person and probably having less fulfilling lives, even if the total amount of stuff being done rises.",
"Ok buddy, let me tell you something about the world we live in. You see, our planet is a tiny ball floating in space. It's made up of stone, earth, metals, water, plants, animals, people, toys, ice cream and all sorts of other stuff. But there's not an endless amount of all that stuff, and certainly not an endless amount of stuff that we have available to us at every moment of the day.\n\nNow people don't tend to think that way: people want to have things. And when they have a thing, they want another thing. Much like when, on your birthdays, you want a present, even though you had a present the year before. Presents are nice, aren't they?\n\nSo when all the people want to endlessly get new things, but there's a limited amount of things available at that time, we need to work harder to make new things available. That's why economies need to grow: because people always want more things than they have at the moment.\n\n**TL;DR: when infinite demand meets finite supply, economies must grow.**",
"A lot of national spending is allocated to things that are expected to grow over time, especially healthcare and pensions. These things get more expensive every year as the cost of living (and healthcare services) go up, not to mention the fact that there are more people to cover as population increases.\n\nSo in order for tax revenue to keep pace with growing spending, we need the economy to keep expanding so the government continues to take in more taxes every year."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is growth so important to an economy?
Fairly straightforward question, brought about by the lead-up to the budget announcement in the UK today, and all the commentators are saying that there's not been enough growth, but I have no idea why the economy needs to grow. I understand it doesn't want to shrink, but can't it stay the same? | [
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47vsr8 | Why do some people go blind after getting eye color change surgery? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'd say it's Darwins law punishing them for spending their time and money on unnecessary cosmetic eyeball surgery."
],
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do some people go blind after getting eye color change surgery?
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4onlbe | Why is deafness and blindness fairly common, yet we never hear of people with impaired smelling or taste? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Impaired taste and smell is also fairly common. It however does not prevent you from doing most jobs, and does not hinder your social interactions so it being known publicly is not very important.",
"Because they get along in society just fine. Your co-worker or neighbour or cousin might have it, but he doesn't bring it up because he doesn't have to.\n\nIf he were blind, however, you would immediately notice.",
"As others have put, the lack of those senses does exist, but there is no reason for the person in question to let anyone know of their impairment.\n\nMy brother and I are as close as brothers can be, and I just learned he has a lack of an important sense a couple months ago. He does not have the sense of thirst. He has to rely on his memory of when he drank last or if his body feels dehydrated. \n\nHe gets by. It's just not something that anyone else has to know because it doesn't affect his minute to minute functioning.",
"They both exist, it's just that it's not a huge impairment, nor is it visible, so it's just not commonly discussed or noticed"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is deafness and blindness fairly common, yet we never hear of people with impaired smelling or taste?
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1lh4t0 | why does the knock-off movie market exist? Who is their audience? How do they make money? Example: Transformers had a knock off called Transmorphers. The Day the Earth Stood Still had a knock off called The Day the Earth Stopped. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Grandparents and foreigners who vaguely remeber/understand the original title.",
"Why? Money.\n\nWho is their target audience? People/Kids wandering through the video store (back when these were popular) and seeing a movie that looked similar to the commercial they saw on TV. They then think that the film must have just been released on video and not just released in theaters.\n\nHow? By making extremely low budget films they are able to make a profit off of people mistaking them for their big budget counterparts.",
"this company has been specializing in knockoffs for close to 20 years\n_URL_0_ most knockoffs are made by them, some are not half bad, some are crap, they often recruit older actors from the 80's and 90's, who are still known names but havent done much work in recent years.\n\nAs for market netflix has a contract with the asylum and all their stuff is in most video stores, its a cheap way from them to add to their list of titles, why because sometimes when youve seen all the good stuff, youd rather watch a B movie then re watching something youve already seen. Only cinema snobs seem to have issues with these low budget B's most people watch movies at home to killtime, as long as your entertained, even if everyso often you groan at the special effects, so what lol",
"I think they also bank on the audience who watch because they're so bad that they're good. I have several friends who pick up most Asylum flicks because they're so entertainingly terrible.",
"In some cases, parents or single parents trying to make ends meet don't have the time, energy, or money to differentiate the difference. One of my good friends from school is a single parent, she's been divorced for 2 years trying to raise 3 girls on minimum wage. She loves her girls very much, but obviously the new, brand name movies and items are not on her list of priorities-so she can't tell the difference. As ParvaDilectus mentioned, sometimes she just hears what resembles what her girls ask/beg for, sees it in stores (and since it's a knock off it's usually cheaper), sees that it is affordable, and happily buys it in the hopes of providing her daughters more than just survival. I've been to more than one birthday party or special occasion where she believes she's gotten them what they \"really really want\" only to recieve disappointed faces and remarks. It's actually quite sad :( but that's life, and eventually, even though it's not \"fair\" her girls will have to learn that their mother is doing her best, and they can't have everything; and, especially, they should be grateful.",
"They are at least as good as the cheesy movies shown on cable channels. I mean, I doubt Transmorphers is any crappier than Sharknado and look how many people watched that.",
"well me and some friends are actually really into those trash films.\nthey are often so bad that they are good in a funny way.especially the films of the asylun",
"Because my grandson wanted [Pirates of the Caribbean](_URL_1_) for his birthday."
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} | train_eli5 | why does the knock-off movie market exist? Who is their audience? How do they make money? Example: Transformers had a knock off called Transmorphers. The Day the Earth Stood Still had a knock off called The Day the Earth Stopped.
| [
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24tmku | Why is green poo bad? | Just as the title states. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Like a lot of medical symptoms, it can be concerning, but isn't necessarily bad. (I am not a doctor. I am not your doctor. If you're concerned talk to a real one.)\n\nIn brief, though, sometimes green colored stool is just the result of eating a lot of dyed food (a lot of people freak out after St. Patrick's day, where they've drunk a lot of green beer, for example; I had one experience where I ate a lot of Crunch Berries cereal).\n\nHowever, the green color can also indicate the presence of bile in the stool. Bile is a fluid made by your liver and used by your small intestine; it helps you digest fats in food. It's supposed to have been reabsorbed by the time the stool makes it through your large intestine and out of your body. If there's still a lot of bile in your stool, it can indicate that something is irritating your gut, and making stool pass through much quicker than normal.\n\nIf it's a one-off thing, you're probably fine (although you might want to think about whether you changed your diet). If you have more than one, it's probably worth talking to a doctor about.\n\n(Source: _URL_0_)"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is green poo bad?
Just as the title states. | [
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3nbr5b | How come so many people believe that "the _URL_0_" is real? | Well - _URL_0_ has been around for some time now, and they continuously get new paying subscribers without legally binding themselves to any obligations. Can anyone explain to me why people believe this stuff? To me it seems to be the easiest way in the world to become a millionaire without actually doing anything but promise something that doesn't exist.
Please Reddit, can you explain? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My guess is that its the same way telemarketers work, they ring heaps of people and maybe only 1% of people will buy, but that 1% is enough to become rich. Since this website is a $100 subscription, all you need is 100 gullible people to scam and you're already $10,000 richer.",
"I don't know if its a scam or not but XPRS has a promotion offering free premium license for all the waiting founders. Its a working system, way smarter than the so called \"AI\" the thegrid are promising. _URL_0_",
"I don't understand how this is supposed to make you a millionaire. The website talks about self-generating layouts; from my point of view, it seems an useful tool for webmasters. Am I missing something?",
"This is the first time I've heard of thegrid. Is this known to be a scam or something? It just looks like an automated, expensive web-hosting service at a cursory glance."
],
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} | {
"url": [
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"url": [
"http://www.imcreator.com/offthegrid"
]
} | train_eli5 | How come so many people believe that "the _URL_0_" is real?
Well - _URL_0_ has been around for some time now, and they continuously get new paying subscribers without legally binding themselves to any obligations. Can anyone explain to me why people believe this stuff? To me it seems to be the easiest way in the world to become a millionaire without actually doing anything but promise something that doesn't exist. Please Reddit, can you explain? | [
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jcsqg | Why does RAM come in specific sizes (256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc) | I'm just curious. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When we are managing a large number of things, we like to organize them in groups of some power of 10: I'm gonna buy **1** TV (10^0 ), **10** boxes (10^1 ), **100** apples (10^2 ), **1,000** songs (10^3 ), etc. It's just easier for us to keep track of a large number of things by grouping them this way (what's easier to remember: 8,723 donuts, or 8 groups of 1,000 donuts?). This is because our numbering system is something called \"base 10,\" meaning we think of all of numberdom in terms of 10. A simple count of the fingers on our hands explains why we made this so.\n\nComputers, on the other hand, think in base 2 (each bit is either on or off, only two states). While we like to group things in powers of 10, computers feel most comfortable grouping things in powers of 2. If a computer were to group boxes together, it'd be in groups like **1** (2^0 ), **2** (2^1 ), **4** (2^2 ), **8** (2^3 ), ... , **256** (2^8 ), **512** (2^9 ), **1024** (2^10 ), **2048** (2^11 ), etc. Those numbers just make \"sense\" to the computer just like how 100, 1000, etc just make \"sense\" to humans, and it allows the computer to access and use all of that memory in efficient ways and keep track of all of it easily.\n\nI hope that made sense, others can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on something.\n\nedit: fixed parentheses",
"It's about powers of two.\n\n2^1 = 2\n\n2^2 = 4\n\n2^3 = 8\n\n...\n\n2^8 = 255\n\nEvery \"location\" of memory is known as a different \"memory address\". If you have an 8-bit system of addressing memory, your bits can be addressed (in binary) from:\n\n00000000 (0)\n\nto \n\n11111111 (256)\n\nSo no matter how big a number you use in addressing memory, in current architecture it's always going to be a power of two. It's possible to use other systems (such as trinary, or having some arbitrary cutoff) but in practice, there hasn't been any value to it.\n\nIf you have a 32-bit system to address memory, this will get you from 0 to:\n\n111111111111111111111111111111111111111111\n\nor 2^32 = 4,294,967,295 or 4 gibibytes (gibibytes is the correct technical term, but there's still a lot of resistance to it, so gigabyte is still used incorrectly). Giga is an SI (metric system) prefix, whereas \"gibi\" is a prefix invented to fix the disparity between a base 10 system where giga means billion, and a base 2 system where giga means 1,073,741,824. \n\nSo, since writing memory addresses in binary always results in a binary number, RAM developers have (almost) always stuck to creating RAM in units of powers of 2, combining individual chips which are (almost) always combining to powers of 2. Other common numbers, such as 640 (either KiB or later, MiB) come from adding common powers of two. You could get to 640 KiB, for instance, by having two chips of 256 KiB of memory, and one chip of 128 KiB of memory. RAM was incredibly expensive then compared to now, so that extra 128 KiB could add a lot of function and marketing bragging rights, but going all the way to three or four 256 KiB chips (bringing it up to 768 KiB or 1 MiB) may have not been considered to provide enough extra functionality to justify an increased cost.\n\nIn hard drives, however, the basic process is quite different, and there's several levels of translation between data on a physical hard drive and getting it to your CPU. There is no reason, therefore, to stick to powers of 2. Sometimes they do, but frequently it's only approximate. A 1 TB hard drive is often under 1 TB or 1 TiB after error checking and directory space and other \"metadata\" such as file dates, permissions, and access rights are considered. There's no hardware limitation that makes a 2 TB drive harder to make or less efficient to use than a 1.9 TB hard drive, for instance.\n\nInterestingly, the people who originally started using \"mega = 1 million\" and \"giga = 1 billion\" conventions, instead of base two numbers, for hard drives were hard drive manufacturers who could make an 40 MB drive and advertise it as 40 MB using a base 10 standard. If they had had to use the binary standard (now called mebibyte), they would have had to get the capacity up to 41.94 *binary* mebibytes to qualify. But in the end, the SI standards are made for *people* and not machines, and machines are much better at math. So now, hard drive capacities are listed in base ten (gigabyte = 1 billion bytes) and RAM is often *listed* as if it's in base ten (gigabyte = 1 billion bytes) but adheres to the older, retired standard of base 2 counting where 1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1,024 kilobytes = 1 megabytes, and 1,024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. So your 4 gigs of ram isn't really 4 billion bytes, it's 4.294 billion bytes, or 2^32 . What started as a sneaky hard drive marketing tactic actually became a way to make computation of data sizes more sane for humans. RAM is the primary holdout for using powers of 2, because computers have to address RAM in binary.\n\nFor more information:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"Imagine that you're moving rocks.\n\nThe rocks aren't that big, and they aren't that heavy, but you can only hold one in your hand at a time. They're about baseball size, and there's a whole pile of them at the playground.\n\nYou realize that you can build a great big castle-style fort in your backyard, if only you had those rocks at home. So, you decide to carry them home and build the coolest castle-fort that you, your friends, your dog, your cousins and even Lord Farkwad have ever seen.\n\nSo, you pick up a rock and start walking. When you get a few steps toward home, you realize that you don't only have one hand. You have two, so why do you only have one rock?\n\nWhen you go back to hold *two* rocks, instead of one, you also realize that you have a lot of friends in the park, too, that can help you carry rocks. They all have two hands, too, so they can also carry two rocks at a time.\n\nBy yourself, you can carry 2 rocks (2^1). When your cute friend, Vylette helps you, you can carry 4 rocks (2^2)... twice as many!\n\nThen, you see your friends Danny Dark and Vince Vega (who both have 2 hands, too). Now you guys can carry even *more*! You can carry 8 rocks at a time (2^3). Twice as much, again.\n\nOnce you get all the Kingdom Chums involved, you're carrying twice as much again (2^4), for a total of 16 rocks at a time. At this rate, you can move the entire pile in one trip. From there, it's 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 and so on.\n\nAll you need are a few more bits... erm, I mean, friends... to help out, and you can have the castle-fort you've always dreamed of!"
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why does RAM come in specific sizes (256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc)
I'm just curious. | [
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2ojzc4 | Gene therapy and how it works in this article about my disease | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"So your body's \"blueprint\" is kept in a giant molecule called DNA, and a small section of that DNA is flawed causing your disease. It's like a lengthy instruction manual with a page ripped out or smeared. So that part of your instruction book is now telling your body through a series of indirect steps to produce a certain protein (sort of like a scaffold for the building that is your body) that is also defective, and that defective structural element is what's causing your condition.\n\nSo the first problem is providing correct instructions via inserting a printout of the corrected pages. They know what the pages are, but how to get them to the sites where they can be used instead of the flawed ones in your DNA? (They're not actively tackling the original instructions in your DNA, but tackling some temporary instructions in the middle of the process between DNA and protein manufacture) \n\nThis is the second part of the problem, and they solve it with tiny virii. The process of telling your body to create the protein is buried behind a massive firewall in your body called the blood/brain barrier, and sending in better instructions to fix the issue requires a VERY tiny messenger that can pass through this barrier. \n\nNormal virii reproduce by passing through cell membranes and inserting their own instructions to tell the cell to \"make more virii, not more cells\". What these sciency guys have done is to take a virus that's tiny enough to pass through the blood-brain barrier, and then fill it instead with replacement instructions THEY WROTE into the cells involved in the process that creates the bad protein. \"Here's the bad bit of instructions, snip that out and replace it with this good bit of instructions.\" Massively. Cool. Stuff.\n\nSo your body uses these replacement instructions (at least for a while as they may wear off depending on the specific therapy and cell/defect types and have to be retreated), generates the good proteins now, and the issue is fixed. \n\nSource: parent of a child with a genetic disorder for which similar therapies are in development."
],
"score": [
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://smanewstoday.com/2014/12/05/dosing-completed-for-type-1-spinal-muscular-atrophy-clinical-trial/"
]
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Gene therapy and how it works in this article about my disease
_URL_0_ | [
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1zuz20 | Does weed being in your system have any mental effect on you when sober? | I feel more focused and clear headed when I haven't smoked in a while. I just wanted to know if I'm being paranoid or if there is an actual reason for this. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cfx7yyr",
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"text": [
"THC has a half-life (the time your body need to remove half of the drug from your system) of 2 to 56 hr. It takes 5 half-lives to clear the drug from your system. So if you are a \"slow metabolizer\" (someone who takes the full 5*56hr to clear the drug), you may be \"high\" for a lot longer than you think (there may still be enough drug in your system to affect other brain functions but not enough to get you full on high).",
"There are two effects. First, marijuana does cause mild withdrawal symptoms if you're a regular smoker.\n\nThe second is that there is still some THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) in your body. THC is absorbed by fat, and then released into your body when that fat is burned. Since your body burns some fat constantly, you have some THC that is constantly being rereleased into your system.\n\nThis is also why marijuana is detectable in drug tests for so much longer than other drugs.",
"I don't have an answer for you, sorry, but the day after I smoke I always feel kinda stupid."
],
"score": [
3,
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Does weed being in your system have any mental effect on you when sober?
I feel more focused and clear headed when I haven't smoked in a while. I just wanted to know if I'm being paranoid or if there is an actual reason for this. | [
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